The Rapunzel Complex
by Dim Aldebaran
Summary: AFxHP, but with a twist: our dear Artemis isn't going to Hogwarts. After all, Hermione is not the only one to see the similarities between the Irish prodigy and the Dark Lord... 12LH, nom'd for Best Crossover.
1. Prologue

_the_

**R A P U N Z E L **

C O M P L E X

**:i:**

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

**:i:**

Prologue

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

**:i:**

_I remember… _

Those were the words winding around the rim of the Pensieve, letters shaped with a silver that seemed drawn from the resplendent liquid itself and trapped beneath a film of diamonds. She had never expected to find such elegant beauty in a place such as this—but, on the other hand, she had never expected to be here either.

Her eyes traced further along the rim. She knew most of the mainstream languages now; only those who'd deny it out of spite would find fault in her claim. Along the rim that same phrase was printed—French, Old English, Italian, Latin, even Japanese kenji—until it came back to the original.

_I remember…_

"I remember," she murmured, and closed her eyes. Simple, beautiful words, words that could easily express much more than the memories themselves. She could imagine what lay in the depths of the Pensieve—but, for the first time in her life, she knew that even the vivid imagination a cryptographer needed would fall far short of the mark.

She opened her eyes again and took a deep, shaky breath. Recent years had taken their toll on her body—at the age of eighteen, she had fewer curves than one of Ollivander's wands, and the grueling pace to work and school had only emphasized these bony proportions. The brown, bushy hair she had so proudly never tamed had been cut repeatedly over time until, at chin length, it would not drape itself over her work. Indeed, the only thing she had left of her childhood were those same brown eyes, but unless her anger was sparked one would count them as glintless mud.

In truth, she had never cared for her appearance except on rare impulses, which she could count on her fingers. The number of times she had willingly gone clothes-shopping could be counted on the digits remaining, and as a result, she resembled a street urchin more than the most promising witch of the century.

_I remember_…

She frowned. Strong words, from the supposed 'Dark Lord'.

Of course, she did not call him 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' in her mind. Such names were foolish, pointless… He called himself Voldemort, and that was what she called him. It was a fitting name; far more fitting than something as generic as the 'Dark Lord', or as common as 'Tom Riddle'.

She smiled to herself. And in her head, she omitted 'Lord'.

Voldemort was Lord over nothing yet.

Whim struck her—the feminine kind, not for low-cut dresses, but the sort Pandora had. What memoryhaunted him so much that it had to be channeled away? Despite everything she—the Order—knew about him, they lacked a motive besides one for power, which only drove the naïve—and Voldemort was not naïve. Perhaps the motive was such that it dwelled too fondly on his thoughts…?

_I should wait_, she thought to herself, jerking back the hand that had already begun to move towards the Pensieve. _Dumbledore hasn't checked it yet—Voldemort would have booby-trapped it—I'm not the one who ought to—_

"I'm not the one who ought to," Hermione echoed, pulling both hands firmly into her pockets and continuing with her mental belittling: _Voldemort would not have left this on accident—there's something in there, a trap, he's trying to do something—_

Her forehead creased. What if Voldemort was _expecting_ Dumbledoreto check it—and had laid a trap within? Hermione had studied some Dark Arts to better understand how to counter them, enough to know certain Mind-Trapping spells were completely undetectable—leaving mental landmines that could envelop one in seconds.

The only reason Mind-Trapping spells were not considered one of the Unforgivables was because they enchantments, not true curses. Of course, they were still highly illegal—the Wizard version of the Geneva Accords had dealt largely with their banishment—but the Death Eaters, having never signed them, had no qualm with slipping them into even simple objects, like a stray piece of parchment or a teacup. Their severity ranged from momentary disorientation to all-out madness… and if Dumbledore was brought to madness…

She shuddered openly. Dumbledore mustn't look into it. He would be biased—he couldn't be objective—he'd be a martyr for the cause—even the greatest could become arrogant in their abilities—he wouldn't stop to think about the consequences—

_Listen to yourself, _she chided mentally, _rationalizing a serious Pandora complex! You mustn't, and you know it. Dumbledore is his own counsel; it would be his risk to take, whether to look into Voldemort's Pensieve or not_.

_And you are also your own counsel_, she found herself arguing back. _Think, Hermione, think! You are the brightest witch of the century! What can there be in there that you can't handle that Dumbledore can?_

"I am so arrogant" she whispered to herself, shaking her head.

Promising herself she wouldn't look, she allowed her fingers to caress the rim, where the simple letters made stark contrast to the Victorian excess of the room.

O, what a seductive thing this was! She would have hours to look into it, if she so chose—a simple note on the door, and the Order would know she was working on something and not to be disturbed. To pour through the memories of Voldemort—ones that he chose to manipulate the viewer with—would be well worth whatever reprimand would be given to her, even if she was somehow discovered.

Memories within a Pensieve could not be edited to suit the viewer.

Memories within a Pensieve were often deposited accidentally by the user, without their consent.

And even Voldemort made mistakes.

One thing was certain. Once Dumbledore looked in, no one else would be able to, mind-trap spells or no. It was now, or never.

Hermione was not a stupid girl, nor an impulsive one. In fact, one of Snape's rare praises was that her cool-headedness and logical approach to problems was what made her such a good code-breaker.

That, however, had been followed by a scathing remark that had left her baffled—that true genii did not sit and study textbooks all day, just like true wolves never paused to sharpen their teeth before the hunt.

She had analyzed this comment. Though she had never told Harry—or, Heaven forbid, _Ron—_she always listened to Snape. Beyond the bitter shell that spat and satirized with all the bias of politics, there was the mind of Einstein.

Snape had told that to her after she had cracked a code where he himself had failed. She had been so proud of herself… until Snape had told her that:_ she was not a genius_. Her teeth were dull from misuse, her fur matted with sleep. What wolf could hunt like that, what wolf could prey on the sheep below?

She would prove him wrong. She would sharpen her teeth on the hide of a snake.

She leaned forward and dipped her fingers into the Pensieve.

**:i:**

She blinked several times, adjusting to the sudden gloom. The first thing that came to mind was the quixotic descriptions of _The Phantom of the Opera _or even _Dracula_. The room could have come from either the subterranean lair of Erik, or the secretive castle of the legendary Baron. The Pensieve's room had been heavily draped with melodramatic crimson curtains (_like dripping blood_, she had thought morbidly); the wall hangings here seemed to drip instead a silver rain, like the silver of the Pensieve—but had instead been frozen in its fall, rendered cold and frozen in a hue of such metallic quality that metal itself had never quite mastered.

The rest of the décor was nonexistent. There were no breaks in the frozen chrome waterfall surrounding her, not even for a door or a fireplace for the Floo network—he must Apparate in and out, for security purposes. One would never know the room even existed if it wasn't for memories, especially if Voldemort had used the same sort of enchantments Wizards used to hide themselves from Muggles, like the Unplottable. The room was, to use in a Muggle context, 'Minimalist'.

The only other items of interest were two chairs, both with decidedly throne-like proportions. Between them was a half-finished game of chess—Muggle chess.

_Not Wizard chess…? _Ron's set came to mind, eliciting a brief grin. _They must not like opinionated pieces giving them suggestions—or maybe he doesn't want anything having records of what goes on…?_

Well, whatever the reason, the set was beautiful. The board itself was transparent, levitating over the floor. The black pieces were carved, in that same Minimalist style, from some sort of translucent, dark green gem—perhaps some sort of emerald? The white pieces were perfectly clear, clearer than glass, as if carved from diamond. Given his budget, that was probably the case.

_A beautiful set indeed, _she thought. Voldemort had sophisticated tastes.

—_but how is it used?_

After checking to make sure she was alone, she walked across the floor—a strange, silver-laced black marble that caused even her soft-bottomed shoes to echo—and peered at the chessboard. Though neither side had lost a single piece, it was obvious that the game was far advanced. As her eyes took in the game, it became all the more obvious that the players were both masters—every single position had multiple purposes, countering and counter-countering other pieces.

The more she looked, the more she grew fascinated. The players were good—pah! She had a certain fondness for chess herself—she had even beaten Ron a few times, though he had made her swear never to tell anyone because of his bloody ego.

But these people played well beyond her ability level. These people wove webs—no, _dances_, where one misstep could tip the whole board into upheaval, start a war that would fall so elegantly into place…

She could have spent the entire evening examining the board, had not one of the two players Apparated just behind one of the chairs.

Voldemort was, at best, physically repulsive. Though his all-engulfing black robes hid most of his features, his reptilian features and Occidental red eyes were still grossly conspicuous. His grotesque appearance was further emphasized by the spoiled milk-white skin and the sunken lines of age.

An expression crossed his features as Hermione turned to stare at him. For a terrifying moment, she forgot she was simply in a Pensieve—her hand reached reflexively for her wand, and her heart threatened to implode with fear.

But it had been Hermione's self-discipline that had allowed her to ace the O.W.L.'s and be the first to break the dizzying rotating codes. Her hand was stilled before it even touched her coat pocket, and her jackhammer-of-a-heart clenched only enough to beat in the same steady pace that it had in sleep.

The expression on his face passed, and, with one long-fingered hand tracing the top of the chair, he circled around. Hermione felt a pang of pity as he sat down—that was genuine pain that crossed his face, not censored or hidden behind masks—

But then she thought about the Longbottom's at St. Mungo's, and Neville's face as he struggled not to cry. His pale face, round like bread dough before baking—then crusted tears on his face, and dirt smudges like char marks. That same face, clenched with anger, muttering hexes darkly under his breath. Voldemort had caused enough pain to drive people mad.

Another thought struck her. Voldemort _wanted _her to see this. He _wanted_ her to sympathize for him.

At this, anger flashed through her, a searing acid through her veins. How _dare_ he presume to suffer—!

_Good_, part of her thought. _I_ _should feel anger towards him—I mustn't forget that, no matter how much Voldemort goes through—_

When he had settled, Hermione was filled with the impossible feeling of self-consciousness, which she had always found frustrating, at best. Voldemort was right in front of her, staring through her to the other chair… She had the distinct feeling of being one of the Hogwarts ghosts.

Self-consciousness when one knew it was stupid was the worst of all. She really ought to stop—

That is, until she connected Voldemort's eerie concentration on the chair with its absence of a user.

_Someone's coming…_

As quietly as she could—Pensieve or not, she was still a wary girl—she moved from between the chessboard and chair to the side of the room. Voldemort did not even blink, which, though certainly reptilian, assuaged her doubts on the reality of the vision.

She did not wait long until the other player arrived. As with most Apparations, there was no dramatic sound or flash of light. One moment, the chair was empty. The next, it was not.

Hermione never quite figured out whom, or what, she had been expecting. Perhaps the tall, brooding sort, with a semi-unibrow and deep, piercing black eyes. Or someone hidden within a dark, enfolding cloak with eyes that would gleam from the depths of the hood, and a nose that would hook slightly at the end. Perhaps a raving madman, his hair long and uncombed, like a briar-patch, and dirt smudged on his cheeks.

The young man before her was certainly none of the above. Though, admittedly, looks were especially deceiving in the Wizarding world, he couldn't have been more than twenty—his skin was pale, healthily so and entirely unlike the spoiled milk of Voldemort's, and unmarred by either acne or lines. The scowl on his face did not continue to pull his skin into a sag after a reserved poker-face slipped on.

_How can he be so young?_

To add to her confusion, Voldemort smiled—smiled!—as the young man brushed some of his longish black hair from his face. "Show-off."

'_Show-off'! Voldemort is saying this to someone a quarter his age! _Though, granted, Apparating into a body position other than standing—and without a wand in his hand, which would normally be used to focus the magic for such an exceedingly delicate task—Voldemort _said _it. Voldemort, the self-proclaimed Dark Lord…?

She continued to stare as the young man leaned forward and moved a white knight. "I know," he said, entirely straight-faced. "It's one of my better qualities."

To her continuing mystification, Voldemort smiled faintly in return. "I've noticed."

'_I've noticed.' They talk like friends._

_Voldemort isn't supposed to **have **friends. He's an emotionless, arrogant, power-hungry **beast**._

_Merlin, I need to be more objective about this…_

"That wasn't a pleasant move on your part," he continued gravely, staring intently at the board, his reptilian face cupped between his hands. For all his repugnant features, he could have been a chess player in Central Park with his intense yet somehow languid concentration on the game.

The young man smiled again, though he also stared, unblinking, at the chess game. Hermione noticed that his eyes looked tired, though he masked it well—ready to shut them then and there, undoubtedly, had he not an impressive amount of self-discipline. She recognized the expression from her own face, from the too many times when she glanced into a mirror and seen something old and weary there—yes, she was very familiar with that look.

_A prodigy wizard, _she thought, and a sudden pang of regret came to her. _He's my age, and I have never met him… I could have used the competition…_

Snape's words came to her. Another wolf. She would have been a far better hunter if there had been another wolf to learn with.

And Voldemort had him, a wolf to sharpen his claws with, to hunt with… wolves are not meant to be alone, they are pack creatures, they need brotherhood, camaraderie…

_Am I **jealous**_? she thought to herself, and heard her answer clearly enough: _yes_. She wasn't on their level, and certainly not on their side, but that didn't stop her from being a lonely wolf.

Harry and Ron weren't wolves. They were nothing more than a distraction from the moment, not wolves at all… they were tamed dogs who sat on their leash and were told what to do.

She laughed humorlessly. And was this wolf looking for a mate? One of the better candidates—no, _the_ best—was sitting not four feet from her, playing chess with her nemesis.

Hermione shook her head of such thoughts. _Stay objective_, she reminded herself, watching the two players stare at the board. _Watch everything now. Analyze later. _

The young man suddenly looked up from the board to gaze at Voldemort. Hermione watched as his blue eyes traveled across the Dark Lord's reptilian features and journey downward to where he kept his wand in a pocket, undoubtedly analyzing for threats. A guarded relationship, to say the least.

_But even the Dark Lord uses a wand day-to-day_, she thought with satisfaction. Many of the powerful Aurors in the Order would not even use their wand except when 'on the hunt', using the more wasteful wandless magic for common tasks. Though she herself certainly kept her wand close to her, she occasionally splurged and didn't bother with the wand for focusing—a bad habit, but one that she made a point of not indulging in often.

Voldemort leaned back from the chess game, resting his head against the hard mahogany of the chair. "You put me in a difficult position."

The young man leaned back as well, his thin lips curving into a decidedly feline arc. "That was the point, Voldemort."

Three things crossed Hermione's mind.

One: He pronounced _Voldemort _without the _t_, which was the proper, but overlooked, French pronunciation.

Two: The young man had answered reflexively, indicative of a silver tongue that was used to moving quickly and somewhat recklessly.

Three: He spoke with a faint Irish accent. She hadn't noticed it before since it was, indeed, faint—he obviously tried to hide it, though the result with the likes of the Dark Lord in front of him was questionable.

Whatever extensions she could make on these revelations would have to wait.

Voldemort's red eyes shot open, focusing intently on the man's face. Their gazes locked; had there been a line drawn between them, it would have been vaporized by whatever it was that passed between them.

_Play for power… _

_Voldemort has power issues even with his fellow wolves. Still likes to be in charge._

It was over quickly, whether it was in an exchange of Occlumancy or a standard issue staring-contest. The young man looked down at the board, clearly shaken, like a willow after a windstorm. "Your move," he said, more to the pieces than to his opponent..

Voldemort. He was obviously displeased at the young man, perhaps for treating him in such a flippant fashion. She supposed even the Lord of Darkness had his limits. Especially the Lord of Darkness.

_Yet this is as close to friendship either will ever have, _she realized suddenly. _Bound together by genius, yet torn apart by pride…_

_Even in a pack, wolves have their disagreements, _she thought, and grinned. The metaphor of wolves fit genii well.

Suddenly, she was aware of the dimming of colors in the Pensieve. The black of the man's hair melded with the dark of his cloak; as the colors began to run together, only the crystalline surfaces of the translucent white chess pieces and the red of Voldemort's eyes stood out…

Panic curled around her stomach. She had wasted her time here—she didn't even know the man's _name—_

"It has been a pleasure, Artemis," Voldemort's voice said, now detached from everything other than the spreading darkness of her mind. "As always."

Strangely enough, it was _'Artemis'_, not Voldemort's true final words, which echoed in her mind.

**:i:**

She broke free with a sharp intake of breath.

_Artemis_, she thought. _I have to find someone named Artemis._

Her eyes opened. No one had entered while she was 'gone', even without her customary warning spells. A stupid mistake on her part, yes, but she had not paid for it. Thank Merlin.

_I have to find Artemis._

Hr brow furrowed, and her eyes looked past the shimmering depths of the Pensieve, where her mind had wandered scarce a minute ago. Why did she need to find Artemis so much? So Voldemort had found a new confidant—so what?

_Potential threat_, she thought.

_Lonely wolf wants mate_, she countered herself, _and rationalizes the human urge to be understood and to have companionship. Animals, evidently, aren't as bestial as everyone thinks._

_And lonely wolf doesn't like it._

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. "You done, 'Mione?" The voice was Lupin's. He was her most obvious mentor in the Order—whereas Snape was all sharp words and a cold demeanor, Lupin was all warmth.

She remembered that first time in an abandoned Death Eater dungeon, scarce four months ago but somehow a lifetime to her… how the stench of rape and murder had driven her out, running away from the righteous horror that rose within her like a tsunami and drowned her.

Snape had seen her tears and told her to be the stoic.

Hermione didn't want to be the stoic—it didn't seem right, dismissing these emotions, as if the atrocities she had so briefly glimpsed had never even occurred. Someone, _someone_ had to remember them…

Hermione went to Lupin.

Lupin—Lupin had told her nothing. However, there was a small patch on his cloak that would remain forever touched by Hermione's tears as he held her close and let her cry the horror away.

"I'm fine!" she said quickly, backing from the Pensieve and attempting to look at least mildly interested in the wall hangings. They really _did _look like dripping blood—

"May I come in?"

_Damn_, she thought, running a hand through her hair to get it in a state of more-or-less neatness. She had spoken too quickly; now, no matter what she said, he would check in.

Normally, of course, this wouldn't have bothered her any more than a mosquito would—a distraction, to be brushed aside and ignored, or, at worst, swatted in a quick and efficient manner. The Order members nearby would wait until she was done analyzing the room before coming in with their own team, or occasionally Ministry officials, if their warning system managed to escape the layers of bureaucracy in time.

Her duties had never been well-defined. The first time the Order had ever invited her on a raid, she had, in fact, asked Snape what was expected of her. After a brisk walk down a corridor, he pushed her into a room and locked the door after her. The locking spells he used had been considerably stronger stuff than what _alohamora _would work against; she had received a magical shock for her escape efforts, and an unpleasant laugh from the other side of the door.

Curiosity had always been her curse, and the room had had so many _books_…

By the time Lupin discovered her whereabouts from a very reluctant Snape, she had learned more about countering curses than all the stolen time in the DA. Every book had hidden surprises, little jinxes to counter, enchantments to unweave…

Lupin knocked again. "_Should _I be coming in?"

Hermione did her best to sound mildly annoyed, which wasn't difficult. A large part of her wanted to look back into the Pensieve and sift for more memories. "If you want, but there's a Pensieve in here."

The door opened. Lupin's figure was silhouetted in the relatively bright light of the corridor, effectively stripping Hermione of her night vision. "Anything interesting?"

Hermione stifled another sigh of annoyance—completely real this time. He hadn't heard her first remark. "I think this is Voldemort's Pensieve, and that _this_," she gestured to the rest of the room, though her mind was in the process of dressing Lupin down for not listening properly the first time, " is his study while here."

Lupin's face darkened as he took in the Pensieve, and he entered the room completely. The door shut behind him, returning the room into its Gothic twilight. "How do you know this?"

She shrugged, turning from her 'inspection' of the wall hangings to face the lycanthrope. "The locking spells on the door bore his signature—literally. And this room has the Drapes." _As you should have already noticed._

Lupin looked around appreciatively. "Ah. The Drapes."

The Drapes had appeared in every single room they had uncovered to be Voldemort's own, and had been put down as his favorite décor. Though they varied in color, from black to burgundy, the rooms were otherwise undecorated.

Lupin broke the silence that had begun to stretch between them. "Are you almost done here?"

_Dumbledore should know,_ went unspoken.

She forced another shrug, and folded her arms across her chest. "You know better than to ask that. I could spend the rest of the evening going through the Drapes!"

"Morning," Lupin corrected gently, and smiled at her expression. "You've been at it a long time."

At this, she yawned, eliciting dual grins from herself and Lupin. "I suppose Dumbledore should look at it anyways," she said sheepishly, casting a glance towards the Pensieve. Inwardly, she shriveled at this deception—_I'm just as bad as the Death Eaters—dropping hints—implying things—not telling the whole truth—_

_Self-serving_, she told herself. _I'm becoming self-serving._

_Like Voldemort._

_Like Artemis._

_Wait, maybe Artemis isn't in it on his own free will—maybe he's acting—_

Lupin regarded her gravely. "A Pensieve is a dangerous thing. Voldemort was foolish to leave it behind—though I suspect he may have done it on purpose."

"Booby-trapped," she whispered, playing the part, though inwardly she shrank again. _Not booby-trapped when I looked in…_

"Exactly," Lupin agreed, and opened the door again. The light was blinding; part of Hermione was mildly annoyed. "Dumbledore is the only one in the Order who could handle Mind-Trapping spells."

Hermione smiled tremulously. "Lucky him," she murmured, and followed Lupin out.

_Artemis_, her mind whispered traitorously. _There's a genius named Artemis on Voldemort's side._

_Lonely wolf rationalizes fascination with other wolves as morbid curiosity. Lonely wolf doesn't like it. _She grinned to herself. _Or does she?_

**:i:**

This was formerly posted under Saeriel's account, but was abandoned due to some time constrains. However, this is now cowritten by both her and Dim Aldebaran.

A note regarding the timeline-

This takes place around 2012. The entire timeline of HP, thus, has been shifted up to a more 'modern' scale to make it coincide with the technology and characters of AF. In particular, this takes place during HBP and will parallel the events therein in an AU fashion. In AF, this takes place approximately five years after the events of AF in 2007.

A further note: do _not _jump to conclusions about the pairings. This is not anymore a straight AFHG than it is HGLV—the former of which we both dislike, and the latter of which we both adore. You can speculate all you want, but nothing—_nothing_—is set in stone.

This fic is being used as Dim Aldebaran's entry to the 'War 'n' Peace' prompt in 12LH. It was also shortlisted for the 2005 Orion Awards in "Best Crossover".

The update time for this story is very slow—a 5,000 word chapter every two months or so—and it will be very long, as indicated by its usage for the 'War 'n' Peace' prompt. The current prediction of its length is 250,000 words. At this rate, we'll be done in five years. A pleasant prospect, no? Fair warning.

Constructive criticism is much appreciated. Both of us are terrible at catching typos, so simply commenting on their presence is useless—we know they're there, but we don't know _where_. However, larger things—the evolution of Hermione's character, the stylistic cadenzas, etc.—are fair game to the fullest extent. We can't promise immediate corrections, but we do go back and edit previous chapters every few months.


	2. Fair is Fowl

_the_

**R A P U N Z E L **

C O M P L E X

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

**:i:**

Chapter Two

Fair is Fowl

"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked."

Oliver W. Holmes Sr.

**:i:**

_Life_, Hermione decided, _is one long joke_.

It was supper at Hogwarts. At best, it could be seen as a feverishly paced free-for-all. The students could hardly appreciate the hard work of the House Elves at the pace they ate at—though Hermione found herself not caring quite as much as she once had. It was as if the trumpets had sounded, and everyone just wanted a last supper before the _Avada Kadavra_s, before the Dementor Kisses, before the _Crucio_s, before the blood and before the storm—

She glanced, suddenly moody, towards Harry. Between classes and helping with the Order, he had been stretched like putty in the hands of a child—but, unlike her, he wasn't used to the general state of AlwaysDoing **Something. **The dark circles under his eyes had deepened considerably until they seemed carved with an ebony knife: late night (or rather, early morning) returns had not been rare occurrences so far this year. His black hair was even scruffier than usual, resembling more the fur trim on an Eskimo's anorak than proper hair. His green eyes were noticeably bloodshot, like a Christmas tree rimmed with holy light and laced with red tinsel.

He was so tired, in fact, that he had not bothered to hide his scar.

Hermione was tempted to tell him; he was still extremely conscientious of it, especially after recent… events. Last year, before she had finally found her tact, she might have told him. There was little he hated more than people staring at It, _It_, that ever-present reminder of the role he ought to be playing in the War.

But she followed a different philosophy now: _let sleeping dogs lie_, she thought, _especially ones having a good dream._

It least he could smile now, when there wasn't blood on the air, and blood on the walls and blood on his clothes and blood on his hands—_blood, blood, everywhere, always there, every night, every goddamn night he sees blood, in the Order and in his dreams—_

She shuddered to herself; Harry, chattering amicably with Ron, took no notice. Harry was a different person these days, even if he didn't always show it. There was something strange behind those startling green eyes, something strange and foreign that she had never seen before…. yet somehow, she knew what it was; perhaps it wasn't as foreign as she told herself. Harry was as human as her.

_She _was a different person as well, different from the bushy-haired wonder of a mere four months ago. The reality of the War had finally sunk in, giving her a gravity she hadn't previously had. It was not the human cost of the War that brought this; rather, the realization that she was _valuable_:

Trainable. She could learn new tricks, even if she wasn't a true wolf. Those other bloodhounds were too set in their ways to try new tactics and spells. They were the Aurors of the previous generation; much of what they did no longer applied to these times.

Loyal to their cause. Snape had once put it, _'…just the right mix of self-righteousness and reason_,_ stubbornness and stupidity, for proper indoctrinating to Our Cause._' He had said this with his characteristic snarl and sarcasm; she had been too shocked to be insulted.

Practice. She was every bit as good at practical application as she was at the examinations. Though she shone as a schoolgirl more in previous years, the depth and breadth of her knowledge was beginning to make her shine all the brighter than those others, so quickly dimmed.

Connections. She was on a first-name basis with every major player in the War, from Order advisors to Ministry Aurors—besides the usual crowd, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Albus Dumbledore, the greatest Headmaster since Hogwart's conception, and so forth. These long friendships counted in the minds of many, for better or for worse depending entirely on the whim of _The Daily Prophet._

She was still at Hogwarts, true, and would be for another year-and-a-half: but the War would not be won in a night. Whereas modern wars between Muggles lasted a decade, wars between Wizards spanned generations. Really, Voldemort's last defeat had just been a brief truce to mourn the dead and heal the wounded.

She remembered when, while looking for a Polyjuice Potion recipe, she had stumbled on a book whose title was incomprehensible, not in any recognizable language family. After staring at it for a few moments, it occurred to her that it was in a cipher. Her curiosity momentarily piqued, she wrote the title down and continued her search.

One thing had led to another; the Polyjuice Potion had had… negative effects. When she had moved into the Hospital Wing, she had requested Ginny bring her her books so she wouldn't die of combined boredom and shame. She did plenty of reading; it almost kept her mind from the humiliation of it all, and it more than delivered her from the boredom aspect. Eventually, she came across the parchment she had written the title on.

She had known a few things about cryptography when she saw this parchment—common sense things, really, but that's what most science was. Logic. And logic happened to be her specialty.

Most common ciphers falls into the 'Caesar Shift' category, where each letter is offset to the 'left' or 'right' by the same number to get the encoded equivalent in letters. A to B, B to C, etc., A to C, B to D, etc., etc. She tried these, even the more obnoxious ones where the offset was 12 or 15. Still, it came out as gibberish, nothing in any recognizable language or language family.

As with most revelations, it hit her. Hard. There was a mirror sitting next to her bed, cruelly bolted to the bedstand, where she would often stare into for hours on end feeling sorry for herself in a most irrational fashion. While in an especially deadly mood, where she seriously considered hacking her still cat-like ears with one of Madame Pomfrey's magical scalpels, her eye caught the parchment, half-in and half-out of her bookbag. Her mind connected two and two, and the thought emerged: What if it was _backwards_, as if in a mirror?

It was ironic to think it was the depths of despairing vanity that set her down the path of cryptography.

Excited, as well as somewhat relieved that she had been diverted from a… morbid line of thought, she tried reflecting the title backwards—without success. Not to be discouraged, she methodically tried applying each of the Caesar Shifts, one by one, to the message backwards, and then other shifts, Karsakov, Díamon, Relanovsky…

_The Booke of the Reason_

After she got over her 'sickness', as she told the other students, she eventually found an excuse to go back to the Restricted Section.

_The Booke of the Reason _turned out to be a dull, clichéd philosophy book on the classic battle of passion versus reason, and was hypocritical to the extent of using reason to argue deliberate idealism in life. It seemed rather pointless to put such a thing in a cipher—she assumed it was purely on the whim of whatever silly old man who had written it.

However she discovered that once her mind had registered the cipher, the rest of the book had simply clicked into place. Just like that. The code seemed to translate itself almost, like breathing, bringing in fresh air, holding it for a moment, then expelling it once more, old and translated… the steady breaths of meditation, of thought, as she read the book in the silence of the Hospital Wing.

In fact, she was so surprised at the speed she could translate, she checked to see if there was any magic involved—she could read it as if it was mere English, which seemed strange indeed, for that was the first cipher she had ever conquered.

But English… English had never given her this sense of… _power_.

She wasn't being idealistic when she said that. To know a code—to know what someone thought theirs and theirs alone—gave her a strange, indescribable _thrill_, not power, she was now sure… something else…

She didn't know what the thrill was, but she loved it.

After that, Hermione began to develop a deep background in cryptography. Mostly just snatches here and there while, captured between S.P.E.W. and school—but, as with most things, those snatches quickly added up when one would go a little out of the way to collect them.

So, when Snape locked her in that room so long ago, decoding and decursing the place had not been a burden. Quite the opposite. Decrypting a message was so similar to unraveling a curse, much the time they seemed the same in her head, for the same sort of logic was needed, and the same steady determination and application.

When she looked back now, she could only think of what a fool she had been—what a fool she still was—in not _thinking_. Yes, she _could_ think, arguably better than many of the Aurors, but not about the _right_ things. Sometimes, her own irrationality in the past disturbed her. She could be so… _impulsive_. Stupid.

It wasn't so much the painful, aching sort of regret: rather, embarrassment for herself and her past foolishness. When she looked back, she could see a thousand better ways she could have handled each and every moment—now, she saw that she should not have run off in shame at Ron's remarks, should not have gone to a public bathroom to cry like a little girl, should not have cowered before the troll… Second year, she could tally up her risks on dozen rolls of parchment, risks that should not have taken so she could have gone in with Harry to face Tom Riddle and the basilisk… She should have watched Snape better in the third year so he wouldn't have turned in Sirius, and Harry would have been so much happier, living with his redeemed godfather—

They built up. Some big, so simple and in the end so _stupid_, that she told herself that would stop making the such mistakes, treating stupidity like the bad habit it was and eliminating it entirely.

But the habit kept coming back. Little slips, here and there, of that old Hermione, who was so full of idealisms and fantastical notions that there seemed no end to her naïveté.

_Stupid, stupid mistakes…_

A common slip, even yesterday! She hadn't put a Warning Charm on the door, which could have been very bad indeed if Lupin wasn't so polite: caught red handed at the Pensieve, never to be trusted again. Even after that, she had handled Lupin terribly, making him question her word. She could see it in his eyes that he had suspected her of looking into the Pensieve. He knew she had the curiosity of a Ravenclaw.

Fortunately, he also thought she had the honesty of a Gryffindor.

Hermione still had it. Morals—idealisms, really—still remained, yet… they just weren't as important anymore. The thought that she was turning into a Slytherin often crossed her mind, bringing the familiar revulsion and fear that seemed to knot her stomach more than exams ever had—but part of her wondered what was so wrong with ambition. With being selfish.

With being great.

"You 'k?"

Hermione blinked, turning to face a concerned Harry. "Yes, yes of course." A pause. "Why?"

Harry indicated her loaded plate. "Well, you haven't eaten anything."

She smiled weakly, digging her fork into the fillet mignon. "Thinking about that Potions test tomorrow," she lied, and put the morsel squarely into her mouth so she had an excuse not to elaborate. Her stomach flopped about at her fallacy, and the bile rose in her throat. Internally, she told it to stop, and it did.

"Well, _I _think," Ron put in, chewing his steak vigorously, "that you're anorexic."

She swallowed her meat. "Ron, that's ridiculous!"

As with most of their little brawls, Harry elected to stay out. Hermione felt a flash of annoyance before settling into a mild resignation on the matter—if she made him chose sides, he wouldn't be on hers. Besides, _both _of them had no business nosing around in her nutritional regime.

Ron smirked, and began digging into a custard. He liked proving Hermione wrong, probably because the pleasure denied was the pleasure doubly desired. "You've been distant lately. How do we know you're not developing suicidal tendencies?"

_Big words, Ronald Weasley. _

Harry gave her pleading look; much to his surprise, she heeded it. At least, that's what the lack of Howleresque vocalizations led him to believe.

"Really," she said softly, raising her eyebrows. "Suicidal, am I now? Now, I suppose risking my life for the Order could be taken that way, since some people are less… shall we say… _wasteful_ of their lives? Not giving their lives to themselves, but to a cause?"

_Ah, what a hypocrite I've become! _she cried out inside, but Ron couldn't hear—nor Harry.

No pleading this time; both of the boys' cheeks blood flushed as they recognized the truth in her words. "Hermione," Harry started angrily, "I don't know what's gotten into you lately—"

_No, you don't, you don't you don't you don't—you can't, please, don't ever fall as I am—_

"I know what it is," Ron cut in, his face roughly the hue of his hair. "She thinks she's too good for us, just because she does Order business!"

Hermione did not lose her cool somehow, the slippery cool of a snake. "Should be mocked for being useful? For giving my life to something I believe in?"

"We're no less useful than you!" Harry shouted, slipping into one of his moods.

"Yeah," Ron continued. "_We _know the value of a little something called _friendship_. Ever heard of it? It's when you **care**."

"Which you don't obviously do," Hermione replied. If not for Harry, who was now standing up in his rage, onlookers might have thought she was discussing where to eat at Hogsmeade. To clinch her phrase, she took another bite of the fillet mignon.

"Well," Ron said, "guess what. Maybe we don't."

Their rage could have suffocated her. Indeed, it had—_Hermione, you're going too far, too far—_"And I should care why…?"

Harry exploded—again. "You were our _friend!_"

By now, everyone in the Great Hall was staring. _Funny how things like this erupt from the smallest things_, she thought numbly.

Harry ploughed on. "You don't do _anything _with us anymore. You're selfish, self-absorbed. You're—you're—"

Lost for words, he backed down, perhaps coming to what senses he had. Abashed somewhat, he met Hermione's eyes for forgiveness, pleading with her to stop. A little wiser from last year, then, from other explosions, other fights—

"You're like one of _them_," he whispered. "Please, don't—"

"Don't come back," Ron finished nastily. "Death Eater."

Bile rose in her throat, but she somehow met his eyes steadily. "I assume you're referring to yourself?" she responded dryly. "Since I have this funny habit of actually _fighting _them." She reached for her goblet, sipped, and spooned out more potatoes onto her plate. It was a poor comeback—the proper term is 'lame'—but she was beyond caring.

Ron's fist clenched. He stood, knocking over the bench Harry had been sitting in earlier. "Come on, Harry. Let's go out to the Quidditch pitch."

Harry didn't move, torn. He had said his hurtful words, yes, more than his share, but he already regretted them, maybe his pride would finally go and he would stay—_Oh Merlin, please let him stay—I'm so sorry, Harry, please understand, please—_

_Sorry_, his eyes seemed to say, and he turned to Ron. "I'm out of practice anyways."

Hermione had the self-control to take her first bite of potatoes. By the time she swallowed, they were gone.

_Why aren't I feeling any emotions? No… pain?_

_It's like every other fight_, part of her answered. _They'll make it up to you in a few days, a week at most. No _sorry _perhaps, but at least they'll come back._

_Until next the fight._

Another voice spoke up. It seemed suspiciously like the mothering tones of Madame Pomfrey—it took what was left of her restraint not to look over her shoulder for the plump silhouette and dimpling smile. _You're in shock, dear. Protecting you from what just happened, numbing it, so it won't hurt so much later—_

—_until **wham! **_The voice had changed into Ron's. _You'll be crying into your pillow with a razorblade in hand, and not even your precious House Elves will care about the blood on the sheets._

She brushed the accompanying image asides—cutting herself was such a silly, irrational thing to do—and continued with her potatoes. They managed to remind her of the unhealthy color of Harry's skin lately. _He sleeps as little as I do… was I wrong to dismiss his uselessness in the Order? He tries so hard—_

The bubbling chatter of the whole Hall had resumed; in the meantime, Gryffindors slipped her stolen, sympathetic glances, but no one comforted her openly—they, too, had noticed the change. And it wasn't worth another uproar, not when there was chocolate mousse to be consumed.

Still numb, she washed down the last of the caramelized carrots with an unladylike gulp of pumpkin juice. She would start crying tonight, just like that, without even the composure to put Silencing Charms on the drapes around her canopy bed, when the thought finally sank in that Ron had never even thought of her as a friend, and that Harry wasn't friend enough to stop him, for she had no friends in the world, no one even gave a damn—

**No**.

The force of her own thought stopped her. She would take this calmly, methodically, like a puzzle. Their words this evening were little different from previous ones—the resentful, almost pleading subconscious undertones remained the same. It was just the conscious justifications and rationalizations that differed.

This time, though, she would not take the blame for overworking, for being too devoted to the Order. _They_ would finally take the blame, openly, consciously, publicly, for not understanding.

She wouldn't admit that her words were true, that she really _had _meant them, deep in her. Not yet. Not when they still could be proven lies, proven by remeasuring their worth as friends to her, their usefulness—

Gryffindors. They were Gryffindors. But she wanted good Gryffindors to wipe her tears when she was subjected to _Crucio_, good Gryffindors that could tell her the hard truth without the influence of Imperius or Vertiserum.

Ron… Ron wasn't so much a Gryffindor to his friends. He wouldn't show his loyalties when he should, and he was all too ready to take back his words with apologies made insincere with pride. And the truth should never be apologized for.

And Harry? Moody. As self-righteous as a Gryffindor, yes, but also as driven as a Slytherin—a Slytherin without the means, besides powerful friends. And she was one of those powerful friends. He was a liability—taking risks where he shouldn't—impatient—thirsty for Slytherin blood—arrogant—

_Another wolf_, she thought. As she stood, her plate and goblet disappeared, undoubtedly off to the House Elves' sinks. S.P.E.W. didn't even cross her mind. _I want another wolf, one whom can run by my side on the hunt and I won't have to worry about him._

_Artemis. Voldemort. They run together. _

_And I'm the only one who knows._

It seemed that the other students in the hallways parted for her, as if sensing her intense need for a purpose, or perhaps worried she might lose the cool she had kept so terribly close with Ron and Harry.

_A pity there is only one Mozart per generation, _she thought sadly._ I wouldn't mind being the other._

**:i:**

She knew that reading was often considered an escapism, but those same people were the ones who held intellectuals in a strange sort of contempt, so she tended to disregard their comments. Besides; she knew better.

If the books were algorithms for the human computer, than the Hogwarts library was the blueprints for a million variations on the nuclear bomb.

Contrary to popular belief, she did not read by random selection, or by the dust-to-pages ratio, or even by the thickness of the spine. School projects usually elicited a quest for the proper reference materials, which could in itself lead to a few new interests. When a book did happen to fall completely into her possession, and her moral qualms didn't get the better of her, she would read it—and _then _return it to whomever had lost it, like a good little Gryffindor. Etc.

Hermione had always known she would have to be on good terms with the librarian. She didn't dare try menial things, like sweet-talking or small smiles. Indeed, for years, Madame Pince had seemed as cold-blooded to her as with the rest of the student body—untouchably cruel, lacking in the more human qualities that they could at least glimpse in the rest of the teachers. But since the events of last year—since the eerie quiet of the summer, the silence before Voldemort's storm—something had changed in Pince in regards to Hermione.

She was still a vulture, of course: she still fussed over her books like a mother dragon over her eggs, or an armorer over his swords. This subtle change had first been noted barely a month ago, late September. It had been one of those rare occasions where Hermione had bitten off more than she could chew—too many books, too much homework, and no Time-Turner to compensate—it had seemed that she would never see_ The Historical Significance of Necromancy _or _Variations on Alohamora _for another month at least.

But once she had returned them, Pince had, yes, her normal grousing on the slight wear-and-tear the cover had taken, on the last-minute return, on how she should consider it late and punish Hermione for it anyways—but then she _gave them back_. For a second month! That was unheard of since, under normal circumstances, one couldn't check the same book out until another month had passed, assuming that other people hadn't borrowed it either—

Hermione was one to count her blessings, but she preferred to do that in the quiet gloom of her usual corner of the library. Not in front of the hard-lined, harsh-worded Pince, who in all likelihood would gladly sacrifice her eyes if only they could shoot literal daggers instead of the metaphoric ones.

Hermione kept counting them. After that, it was smaller, subtler things—another pillow in her usual library seat, worn leather chair, extra Sound-Dampening charms on the shelves surrounding her little enclave, a table for her books…

But the real blessing had come today. On the chair, there was a key.

She did not need telling that it was the key to the Restricted Section.

This was an honor not even the Head Girl received—the key to arguably the most interesting place in Hogwarts, for the Restricted Section made up a full two thirds of the Library, full of forbidden books and lore that Hogwarts had accumulated over the years, many Ministry cast offs from Minister regime to regime, things long forgotten by all…

The thought that this might have been an accident—or worse, a set-up by jealous Ravenclaws—briefly crossed her mind. Even at Hogwarts, she had her enemies, more than just those who cared either way about her heavy involvement in the Order, and more than just those who hadn't the means to undermine Pince….

No, no. She was overestimating the students again, all of them. Pince had given her a key, and that was all that mattered. She had been trusted with power, and she wouldn't abuse it, either: or at least, not what would constitute as abuse in _their _eyes. Not yet. Pince would watch her, to see if she used this gift wisely or not, and would take back the key without a qualm if Hermione showed a hint of fascination with the Dark Arts.

She hadn't grabbed it yet. As if fearing Pince would come out that very moment to snatch it back, Hermione leaned forward and clasped it firmly, burying the key deep within her robes. It felt warm beneath her touch, not at all the cold oiliness of metal, but the soft security of wood—ebony, if the coloration and relative weight were to judge.

But she didn't just sit there, marveling at this further turn of events. Oh no. The Restricted Section was on the other side of the library, which was a bit of a walk.

As she got up, she recalled her mental map she had made of the Restricted Section during her second year. Though Wizard genealogies would be in the first row, she suspected 'Artemis' wasn't a Pureblood—or at least, his name hadn't come up in any of the major Wizarding families, and certainly none of the reputedly Dark ones.

A bastard, perhaps? It wasn't uncommon, even with the simple contraceptive charms created by the magical equivalent of Margaret Sanger.

Yes, it was certainly plausible. Tom Riddle, after all, had come from a background of ill repute as well—an orphan, and a Mudblood at that. Though he retained an outward distaste of such things, he would certainly open his arms to an ignoble Amadeus, especially since being a bastard—or a Mudblood—were such temporary, human things…

That line of thought hardly narrowed the search. Indeed, it only seemed to broaden it, so she switched tracks, running through her observations made in her time within the Pensieve. Artemis had an Irish accent, which pointed to the obvious—he was Irish. Or at least, he had grown up there—precious few Irishmen had the dark look of the Welsh, or the sort of intellectual sophistication he must have, due to a rather subpar education system that did not do a good job of encouraging development for the sake of.

So, he was probably upper class, and his ancestors probably weren't natives. Probably privately schooled as well, which was especially needed if he hadn't gone to any of the major Wizarding schools: he had not been in the cream of the crop brought over during the Triwizard Tournament, which he surely would have been otherwise. Besides; his Irish accent would have stood out against the slurring Bulgarians and the equally incomprehensible Francophone students at the Triwizard Tournament.

_He could be self-taught_, part of her mind whispered.

She didn't take the above seriously, at first. He couldn't possibly be tutored unless his family was on the very edge of social society, let alone self-taught! Wizardry took time, guidance, materials, _acceptance_… even the most wealthy would send their children to school…

But he was Artemis. He could have very well have taught himself with little useful schooling at all, like Mozart or Einstein. After all, not all prodigies were like Yo-Yo Ma, guided by parents and tutors in hope of creating talent if they found none.

At this, her imagination generated a venerable library of thoughts—what if he was even a Muggle, adopted by Voldemort himself—faking that Irish accent; he could just be a bloody American—maybe Voldemort and him had just acted out that whole scene, manipulating her at yet another level—

The inner voices silenced as she reached the Restricted Section. Since Fred and George had broken the enchantments protecting it as part of their 'Grand Finale' last year, Pince had had a literal _gate _installed, and had rearranged the bookshelves so they formed a fence, rumored to have some nasty jinxes at the top serving as the magical substitute for barbed wire. This gate served as the only portal through this hedge of curses.

She knew it wasn't just for show, contrary to the more optimistic side of school gossip. It was strange—as she became more powerful, it was as if she could _feel _strong enchantments, like gravity tugging on a nebula. The enchantments on the gate shone like a quasar against the fierce blue-giant haze of the shelf-tops, blinding that unexplainable sixth sense.

Hermione pulled out the key, feeling, measuring the warm weight. Yes, it was ebony—few woods would be able to contain such a stable, long-lasting enchantment of this magnitude. Call it a white dwarf.

When she inserted it into the lock—shaped like, ironically enough, the gaping maw of a vulture—there were no satisfied clicks, no easing of the blinding enchantments. A thought flashed through her head: how did she _know_ this was the key to the Restricted Section?—Pince, surely, could not be this benevolent even under orders—

But the gate didn't do anything _else_, either, lacking the librarian's customary sadistic twist. The vulture-lock didn't even spit the key out!

She would surelyget cursed for this one—but she tried the door, pushing firmly. Without the melodrama that the powerful spells implied, the gate opened soundlessly, giving her passage to the dusty labyrinth beyond.

She stepped through quickly, fearing it would close before she could get through, swallowing the key with it. When it didn't, she felt rather foolish—honestly, she was getting all irrational about this, like a schoolgirl before summer vacation in the last class of the year, wondering whether she should simply run out.

She pulled the key out, pocketing it. Now, in retrospect, there seemed to be a slight difference in the gate's spell, before and after. Of course, it was purely intuitive.

If this new 'sixth sense' wasn't just her imagination, it would pay to develop it. Such a skill would prove invaluable in facing the likes of Artemis and Voldemort. After all, she had precious few advantages over the greatest wolves in the Wizarding world.

But surely Voldemort didn't have the likes of _this _at his disposal! Hermione stared, as starry-eyed as she could get before turning anime, at the googolplex of books that stretched towards the questionable horizon of a doorway on each end—probably leading to more rooms, more _books.._.

She leaned against the nearest bookshelf, careful not to touch anything that might hold a grudge against the living. This whole _day _she had been so sickeningly stupid, her thoughts trailing and looping like a ball of yarn Crookshanks had spotted. Now, _now_, she would think.

Hermione ran through her previous theorization on Artemis' background. He could be virtually anyone, any_thing_; even his name could be some sort of mythological pun—Artemis the genius, Artemis the wolf, Artemis the hunter? And even beyond that: Voldemort could have simply acted out the whole thing, as she had briefly feared earlier, just to play God with an enemy's mind. Though she was already certain that he had left the Pensieve there to manipulate her, perhaps it was not just to tease and lure in the Order's brightest—

She closed her eyes against the books; if they leapt out of the shelves and opened their paper jaws to devour the bookworm alive, well, she would be had. She didn't particularly care anymore.

_Artemis_.

Her eyes opened.

_Assume Artemis is real._

'_Artemis' is not a common name._

_Do a search for 'Artemis'…_

She muttered a bibliographic spell, long since memorized. She heard a collective sigh as books escaped from their shelves, hundreds of them, beginning to slip from the shelves.

_Wrong Artemis._

She changed the spell's parameters to exclude mentions of the Greek goddess and adjusted for gender—

She was patient; she waited for a time, watching the end of the infinite hallway for the flutter of some tome.

No books.

Hermione closed her eyes. Nothing in the genealogies, nothing in the school attendance records.

He was a Muggleborn.

It was as if a strange weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she stood up straight, staring around at the dust-gilded books. He was like her. A Muggleborn.

_Like her._

She laughed at the shelves around her, laughed and laughed. _Artemis was like her! _Her thoughts were as triumphant as the dawn. All she had to do was search him out on a Muggle computer, and she could learn of this new wolf—

Paper fluttered in front of her, sealed with cherry-red wax. She plucked it out of the air.

She touched the wax sealing it. Still warm.

She opened it:

_Ms Granger—_

_Please come to my office whenever convenient. The password is 'madeleine'._

Dumbledore wanted her.

_Damnit._

_He knows… he knows what I did…_

Lead settled into her stomach, thick and hot—as if she was Chimera, and her thoughts Bellerophon, untouchable on his Pegasus, as he dropped the lead into her mouth and let it melt in the fires of her guilt, slowly killing her—

_Oh stop it, Hermione Granger!_ she told herself, hitching her bookbag up onto one shoulder. _You're a grown witch, not some gibbering child!_

And with that, she hitched up her robes, and headed off to the Office.

**:i:**

Five points to whomever can see what shift was used on 'The Booke of Reason'.


	3. and Fowl is Fair

_the_

**R A P U N Z E L**

**C O M P L E X**

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

**:i:**

Chapter Three

…and Fowl is Fair

"I want to stay as close to the edge as possible without going over. Out on the edge you can see all sorts of things you can't see from the center."

Kurt Vonnegut

**:i:**

"Madeleine."

The gargoyle slid aside with an almost distrustful expression on her face; they had a history, the gargoyle and her. She had once tried to enter Dumbledore's office without knowing the password. Thanks to her parents, she had not known too many sweets, and after a time she had tried to force her way up. They both bore the resulting scars.

She had taken her time getting there, as if slowed by the slog of thoughts in her mind: her neurons spun about, coming up with choice phrases, explanations, excuses. She had practiced her facial expressions in passing windows, twisting her lips this way and that, wrinkling a brow, crinkling the eyes, all for just the right expression of innocence. Her voice, too, in the deserted corridors, adjusting the tone so it lay in the domain of empathy, not sympathy; equals, not teacher and student.

It seemed only fitting to her; she had done enough Order business to earn that right. If he challenged her reasoning… well, she was not a child anymore. She was in the Order, now. One of them.

On her way up the stairs, she evened her pace to her usual rushed lope; still, it would be better if found no reason to suspect her. Perhaps he already knew of her fallacy, but there was that chance that, just maybe, he didn't. The slender needle of hope was enough—if she was wrong, all it would do would prick her.

If she was right…

She tried not to think of the consequences.

The door: she put on her worried-but-curious-despite-herself face and entered.

Dumbledore's office, as always, had that feel of quixotic agelessness, whimsical silver contraptions whirling this way and that, maps and scrolls stacked up in plateaus and mesas, often topped with a tome or two of arcane knowledge—

"It's new, that one."

Hermione looked up, blushing; he had caught her looking at a wonder of bronze wires and sparkling vials, balanced precariously on a Penseive's edge—_Voldemort's _Pensieve. "It's a Mnemosynaether, isn't it?"

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled in such a manner that she could see it from twenty paces away. "Ah, yes. I thought you'd take a liking to it."

She frowned, walking deeper into the Headmaster's office. "But those are ancient, no one has ever figured out how they even work—"

Dumbledore only smiled.

Mnemosynaethers were peculiar devices. Historians speculated them to be built by a lost order of magi even before the great Sundering of Wizards from Muggle kind. However, the engineers had deemed this impossible—Mnemosynaethers were built with enchantments never even dreamed of in those ages. Few even existed, and because of their… select applications, little thought was given to them except for old men with a whim.

Fortunate, really, that this old man had both the whim and the application at hand.

Dumbledore gestured to a seat; Hermione sat down, examining the hieroglyphics on the parchment before her with mild interest, having taught herself various forms the previous year. They detailed the fall of Atlantis; was this, too, linked to the Mnemosynaether?—no, it was another mere curiosity in a room full of curioses.

"As you well know," Dumbledore began, "little is known about Voldemort's childhood."

She nodded, deciding that her feigned ignorance could be cast aside. "The Pensieve," she prompted.

Dumbledore nodded. "I will make this brief: I have been collecting memories of his childhood in an attempt to understand him."

"So you may defeat him," Hermione finished.

Again—a nod. "Thus far, I have only been able to retrieve one memory from this particular Pensieve—the rest have been 'deleted', one could say."

"Hence the Mnemosynaether." She feigned dawning understanding; she felt a curious twist in her stomach as she did so.

"Precisely." He gazed at her; she was unsettled by the pale eyes and looked down at her hands. They twisted in her lap. "The memories Lord Voldemort wishes to hide will be far from pleasant, but, if you will, I will share them with you."

She could not help but nod. Then, thinking herself too eager, she added, voice melding anxiety and hope, "Do you really think I'm the right one?"

"I have been… sharing these with Harry," Dumbledore replied slowly. He looked intently at Hermione through his half-moon glasses. "Initially, he would have been the only one, but given how... intimate your work is with Lord Voldemort, I think it is only right."

_Harry already knows—_

—_the Chosen One who can't do his Potions homework—_

—_who can't even stand up for his friend—_

"I'll do it," she replied.

"I thought as much," Dumbledore said cheerily. "The Mnemosynaether needs a day or to draw the residual memories from the Pensive; shall we speak again then?"

She nodded—then hesitated.

Dumbledore caught this and smiled. "Potions next hour? By all means, stall here, if it pleases you. I understand Slughorn is out with a nasty bout of flu."

"And—" she hesitated again. "Should I tell Harry?"

He looked across the rim of his spectacles. "I figured you two could do with some time to cool off," he said. "I hope you don't mind."

She nodded—he had sensed her envy, however brief.

_Yet here I am—I have lied, and he does not know—_

_But he must know!—yet he has not said a word…_

"Is everything alright, Miss Granger?" Again, the eyes, eyes that knew Legilimency—

"I'm fine," she responded, and added with a grin, "—though I haven't studied for the Potions test."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "Order business?"

"I'd ask you to explain it to Slughorn, but I assume Snape's taking over, in his absence?"

The twinkle returned to Dumbledore's eyes. "Good luck, then—unless there is something else?"

She shook her head, and left.

The door closed behind her. She didn't stop walking until she was out of range from the gargoyle; she ducked into the nearest niche and leaned her head against the wall, reveling in its cool solidarity.

_Merlin… he knows…_

_He knows and he still told me…_

Her stomach tightened; if she could bear the shame of tears, she would have cried.

_He trusts me._

**:i:**

She didn't need to have studied; her classes came to her instinctually now. However, Snape was overseeing today, true to her guess—and he would be making this intentionally difficult, undoubtedly.

For the test, she had to brew a potion, of her choice, that induced lucid dreaming. She chose the Hagarian Set—a potion that, though the most complicated of the choices, would provide the most pleasing mixture of control and spontaneity.

It took her half of the double-potions—the first done. Things came to her more quickly, these days—she had created and downed a Daedelian Potion over the summer, an old potion that would, over time, enhance her mental facilities up to tenfold. The improvements had been disappointingly slight thus far, though the improvement was still there. An artificial wolf, perhaps, but a wolf she would become.

When she held up the gold-hued potion for inspection, Snape came swooping in, his reflection on the vial a bat sweeping over the harvest moon. "Done already, Granger? Ten points from Gryffindor, for cheating."

"Professor, I did not—"

"See me after class." And he swept away, the very bat.

_I didn't do anything wrong! _her mind protested—

—but then, her rationality kicked in. Assumptions were annoying; but she couldn't stop those first thoughts, twisting through her mind like falling scarves. _He needed an excuse to talk to me in private—he wants to talk to me about Artemis—Merlin, he must know, he must have something for me about him—_

Anticipation made her mind swirl. Snape was still quite the double agent; he had been out again last night, she could tell by the dark rings in his eyes. They would not have been able to do the raid on the former Death Eater lair if Snape had not accompanied them to the inauguration of their latest lair in the Loire Valley.

She forced her hands still as she put her potion ingredients away. The others had heard, of course. She had been meeting with Snape several times a week. She had gotten the idea from Harry, really—Snape was a wolf, but an old wolf, his slowing mind disguised only by his sharp tongue. Genii always fade young. However, he was still a master of his art, and his instruction was a welcome challenge after the monotony of the rest of school.

Several Gryffindors threw her envious looks as she slipped her cauldron into its slot. The looks the Slytherins gave her were something less innocent, though she was used to the teasing by now. Snape still viewed her as an overeager whore for knowledge, which, in a way, she was: but if there was any attraction between them, it was for fellow minds, fellow half-wolves, lurking in something so shadowy and dark they could only see each other's silhouettes. Physical desire for him was unimaginable; it simply could not be in such a relationship.

She still had more than an hour. Snape had taken on the appearance of a Stoker vampire, and was now occupied with glaring at Neville's hissing potion, as if willing it to explode. Pathetic, really—a wolf fallen to the self-gratification of failing students.

As if sensing her derision, he turned and gave her a look, fast and sharp, as a mongoose might.

She went up to him. Neville looked distinctly grateful, but ashamedly so; he had recently discovered pride, and intervention was a blow. "You wanted to see me?"

It was unnecessary, perhaps, but she had a very different definition of 'unnecessary'—'unnecessary' was the middle class, the public school system, the political moderates, the IQ 100. The extremes were all that mattered, really—and baiting Snape seemed properly risky to her.

He swept off again, to the potion storage room. She followed; she could feel their eyes following her, wondering, _wondering _what exactly they talked about behind closed doors—or, to those following the curve of her neck, the sweep of her hips, what exactly they did.

Such rumors were disgusting—but they were doomed to fly about. She had learned to bear them from Harry. Just watching him suffer second year had built her up for the fourth with Skeeter. She had a taste of what it would be like to be Harry Potter, then—the bad sort, though. She had never tasted godhood as Harry had.

She closed the door behind her. The musty smell of potions enveloped her like a warm blanket, oddly comforting. Snape did not look pleased; she clung to the scent of griffin bladders like she had never thought possible. Perhaps it was petty on her part, but he was old, she was young, he was unapproachable, she was naïve. She just had to deal with it until even he saw her as an equal.

"You have one minute," Snape hissed, turning to face her, "before it's a detention."

She let the sharp scent of rosemary guide her words: "I'd like to know why you sought an excuse to see me after class."

"Excuses are what we are, Miss Granger." His voice was like honey, slow, smooth, golden—then sharp, bitter, fermented. "You already make them yourself."

—_just as always, subtle accusations—_

She could not stop the thought: _He is what I will become, isn't it?_

Her stomach made that awful twist, as if being gouged out.

Her first thought was for how Snape knew: the Pensieve must have had a trigger on it, alerting Voldemort, who must have thought it amusing to tell of Hermione's insistent curiosity. Did they laugh at her pathetic attempts at decoding, did they mock her sudden infatuation, did they count the hours until she fell into their ranks, drawn by this infuriating infatuation—

"While you were… _investigating_ last night, I was entertaining Death Eaters. Macnair mentioned the Dark Lord's latest _affair_."

The heaviness of the room smothered the beating of her heart. "What is it?"

"The Dark Lord has a lover."

—_Merlin—_

_Artemis—Voldemort—_

_Not just brother wolves, but mates as well—_

She sat on a convenient stepladder. "Explain."

His eyebrow raised. "Would you like an exact quote?"

She shook her head. "Is he a threat?"

_Damnit. 'He'—I should have said 'she'—the most obvious thing to guess—_

Snape caught her mistake and spun it back at her. "Most likely. _He_ is quite the prodigy, I am told."

She was stung as if slapped; only a slow blush to her cheeks revealed her shame. "What can you tell me?"

"Only Macnair's drunken rant."

"Repeat it."

"The summary, or the complete spiel? You Gryffindors have such delicate ears."

She bit her lip. "Everything."

Snape murmured a spell of auditory recall; his voice changed to match Macnair's, duplicating the words exactly: "_Didy'_ s_ee that new bastard yet? No? Curse him for me, won't you? Damn beardless boy, not even of age, can't hold his liquor—spilled things out, shouldn't be said. Lucius got him drunk last night, very 'pset. He never gives us scars, but Lucius has 'em, got a royal Crucio, he did, by His own 'and. No one saw it, dunno what really happened. No one sees that bastard, but he's gonna pay, we'll get 'im later. No, don't go already, the womenfolk are comin' in soon, Goyle says they're virgins, the lot of them, we're thinking the boy'll show up, get a taste of somethin' sweet that he won't get from Him —_"

"Enough," Hermione interrupted. "An overview?"

The summary was brief, and mercifully clean: "Lucius got the boy drunk; the Dark Lord is obviously quite attached to him. He's quite young, some sort of prodigy around your age, and—" he raised an eyebrow "—a 'pretty boy'."

"What does Dumbledore plan on doing about this?" She managed this quite calmly, relative to the roiling of her stomach.

"Nothing," Snape replied. "Foolish, really, but only to be expected."

_Lovers—_her mind spun, the world turned, yet she could not stop breathing.

_Ravings of a drunken man_, she rationalized. _Giving a name to a relationship too complex for him to understand, too veiled for him to even see in its entirety._

"He talked to me—"

"And to Harry, and to senior members of the Order," Snape interrupted smoothly. "The Order will do nothing."

Her heart accelerated; she wondered if it was the thyme in the air, the foxglove, the dragon heart, or if it was her, out of control, irrational. "And—us?"

"'Us'? There is no 'us', Miss Granger, nor will there ever be."

"You think I'm a fool," she shot back. "A fool who wants to be what only luck with the chromosomes can provide. Maybe I am, but I still have to _know_."

Snape drew her potion from his robes and passed it back to her. It looked like ancient honey, now, having aged. "Take it tonight," he said, "and pester me again tomorrow. I have better things to do than deal with infatuated little girls."

And he opened the door; class was almost over, though everyone was still hunched desperately over their cauldrons. "Sweet dreams," he murmured as he swept out the door.

**:i:**

The potion was heavy against her thigh, warm and smooth like a promise. She had no interest in lunch, so she returned to the dorms—only to find Ron and Lavender snogging on the couch. They didn't notice her presence as she climbed the stairs to her dorm—nor did they notice as she turned at the top, and watched for a moment.

It all seemed rather repetitious to her, the same… _movements_, the same parts—surely the same sensations. Wouldn't it be boring after a while? They seemed gluttonous, feasting on something for so long it had lost its flavor. Roman of them, really.

_Artemis—will we be like this?_

_Or never at all—?_

She dismissed this. _Idle fantasy_, she told herself.

—_and even so, his body is not his mind—_

She considered this, now lying down on her bed, face up, eyes too open. The potion gleamed like a harvest moon, yellow, but hazy, as if a cloud had passed over.

She had only Astronomy, in the evening, hours later—she'd have time for a dream, she'd have time to find out for herself—perhaps it would still be imagining, but it would be real enough for her—

She fingered the potion, raising it above her head. The canopy turned a warped shade of maroon through the vial. _To drink, or not to drink—that is the question._

She knew what she would dream about: she had never dreamed of lust or its requisite yearnings. Would she find an addiction, a furthering to this frustrating infatuation, a desire that not even her rationale could abate? Perhaps she would steal ingredients for subsequent doses, and perhaps Snape would let her, watching her fall into a cycle he knew she would never break? It had become like that for knowledge, she knew, and maybe artificial love wouldn't be so different—

She considered Ron, Lavender—

_Do I want to be like him—_

_Addicted, and not even caring?_

There was something that deepened the wound, some thought that swept across her tender mind like a cruel scimitar—but she drifted, and drifted, the vial slipping into her pocket as sleep took her.

**:i:**

It wasn't the lucid dream of the Hagarian Set, but it was decent enough. She drifted upwards through the haze, up and above until that which had awoken her became apparent.

She glanced at the grandfather clock—three in the afternoon.

And—that knock again.

She glared at the door, willing Harry and his pathetic apologies away. She didn't want to fight, she didn't want to argue, she didn't want to heal their friendship—she had other things, more important things to deal with—

It occurred to her the knock did not come from the door. She sat up in bed, looked around, and nearly fell back into the rich coverlets.

"I heard you didn't try out for Quidditch."

Hermione snatched her wand and went to the window. Lupin had an uncertain hover on an old Cleansweep. "What in Nimue's name are you _doing_?"

"Something's come up," Lupin replied succinctly.

"Does Dumbled—"

"Yes," Lupin said shortly, "but really, we have no time." He gestured towards the broom.

She leaned out. The Grounds swirled beneath her like a melting emerald. "You had better have a bloody good Cushioning Charm," she muttered, and slid onto the broomstick, clutching at his midsection.

She felt inertia begin to pull at her gut, twisting it in a way that made guilt feel like a mere twirl on the merry-go-round. Resolving not to look down never worked, but she tried anyway—

_Merlin_, she thought. Lupin twisted his head backwards when she snatched at his robes, nearly tearing them from his thin frame. _I **hate** flying._

She had not grown up with broomsticks and Levitate charms, nor had she grown up reckless and wild. Even though her trust in her spells was near absolute, she could not help but wonder about the inevitability of mistakes and deterioration in the enchantments.

Perhaps her fear was the mere result of a rational mind: faith in nothing, doubt in all?

Not that it mattered. She looked down and nearly died. The world whirled like a Charybdis of color, and she, Odysseus, clinging to his own brand of life.

They spiraled, up and up and up—where the casual Muggle could not see, or perhaps to find the place from above, with all of Britain stretched out below them as a great map. She jammed her face into Lupin's robes when she thought of the necessary plunge from such heights. The scent of cloves seeped into her whirling mind—_the smell of lycanthropy_, she thought vaguely, _sickly sweet_, _like death_.

His worn robes were oddly soft; she concentrated on the texture, the warmth, the scent, anything to rid herself of that terrible pulling on her gut. She squeezed tighter at her midsection; there was a suspicious _woosh_ of air past her, as if they had quite nearly missed something that would not have been a pleasant thing at all to crash into.

"Where are we going?" she asked. Her eyes stayed tightly shut—idly, she wondered if her imagination had overdone the horror of flying, it wasn't so bad—

She opened her eyes, then closed them again. _I **hate** flying._

—_but why the Forbidden Forest? Not even the Death Eaters venture there—_

Her throat caught, and not from inertia. _They've allied themselves to giants and Dementors, werewolves and vampires—what now?_

She heard the sound of a different sort of thunder and gasped. _No—nononono—_

_They've always been their own, how could they do this, how could they stand subservience—?_

The slowing of the broomstick was somehow more gut-wrenching than the flight itself. She idly wondered how Lupin could breathe, given how tightly she clutched at his midsection.

When the world had stopped, she opened her eyes. They hovered just above the canopy. Though the midafternoon sun shone like a heliotrope, the forest below was black and green, like powdered malachite. "Lupin, wha—"

Lupin half-turned on the broom. "There isn't much time. We are deep in the centaur territory, in the Forest. Are you familiar with its history, by chance?"

Hermione nodded, already recalling the passing mention from _Hogwarts, A History. _The deep Forest had been a fierce battleground between the Romans and the local Celts, the battles were concentrated in this area, and were some of the bloodiest in all of Britain. This was due to the centaurs' inclusion: they had never been fond of civilization, not the sort that the Romans brought with their taxes and gladiators and aqueducts. The Celts had often drawn the legions to this place, counting on the centaurs' aid—but once their Lord had fallen in battle, they forsake the humans, leaving the Celts to their eventual doom. This had been a turning point in centaur history; before this point, they fought in the more idealistic battles alongside humans.

Lupin saw the cogs in her head turning and grinned. "There's some things that aren't in the books—things we had to get from Firenze. The centaurs have come to mourn the anniversary of the death of one of their legendary Lords. We would have told you sooner, but Firenze informed us that our—previous choice wouldn't work."

_The irony_, she thought as the broom sank down, _that the very place they swore off humans is where they'll join in our affairs once more._

And—why? That question rang in her mind even as she slipped from the broom. "What am I supposed to do, exactly?"

He gave a small, tired smile . "Make friends," he said. The broomstick began to rise—and she was already lost in her books of history, in those vague allusions to centaur rites, in the careful evasions of what the authors didn't know. "Hermione, be careful—"

It was like a whisper in the forest, closing in around her. She scarce heard it.

So little was known about centaurs—few humans were tolerated, and none since the days of Merlin had been welcomed. She would be relying on this sacred time of mourning to halt the lash of hooves; beyond that, she was female, which was better than egotistical males in their eyes. Her face was known to these centaurs, and not in a good way, due to previous adventures—and adventures only occurred if you were doing something wrong. You never had adventures if you were going about your business the right way.

She had been in the Forbidden Forest before—on her little flings with danger in previous years, and more recently on Order business. She had never gone this deep before, however, not all these kilometers in… did things get more dangerous, the further you went in, or was it not a matter of how deep you went in, but how bad you wanted the danger—

She breathed the scent of darkness in. Where the centaurs gathered, she did not know. She had heard the sound of them only moments before, the sound of them moving in a great stampede. Their speed suggested escape; their direction implied that, whatever they fled from, it was heading towards her current position

She drew her wand and slid into the hollow of a yew tree. The creatures of the Forbidden Forest had never been completely catalogued; perhaps it was some unheard-of monster that chased after the centaurs, something strange and terrible that nothing could ever escape from—

A slow silver drifted into the clearing. She ran through the possibilities, muttering the appropriate curses for each beneath her breath.

The pale, ethereal glow brightened. The whole clearing was dappled with it now, lending it a sort of beauty she had come to expect in the darkness. Her breathing accelerated—the danger she had faced before had been easy, simple, elaborate curses and traps she could unweave at her leisure. This—this _came_, whatever it was, came and she could not stop it, there would only be a moment and nothing else, one shot, one spell, one chance, with scarce a time to think—

The light filled the glade, now, casting bright shadows and dark pools of light. Maybe it could hear her heartbeat—maybe it was coming for her now—

_Is this what I want? _

The glade was silent; not even the wind dared trespass on the sanctity of death. Nothing would answer her questions except for _it_, coming to answer in the language of blood and fire…

_Not Artemis, not a wolf—but danger, sweet danger that takes me even now?_

She clutched her wand. It was slick with sweat. She had never been so afraid as nshe was now, so alone, and the glade just kept brightening with that damnable light, and despite it all, she found herself in a mad ecstasy. _This_ was who she was, not someone atrophied by books—

_Is my love of danger the cause of my infatuation?_ Her mind was calm; her body was not. Her skin had a sheen of sweat that glowed like a pearl in the effusing light. _Or—is my infatuation the cause?_

The place seemed washed in moonlight, drowned in fact, as the light poured in from beyond.

_Would I be doing this if I didn't want the danger?_

Her breathing must be music to the predator, hunting her down—

_Would I ever have done this if not for a wolf?_

She grasped her wand tighter, readying herself to face the monster, to face it down and let it know she was more than Hermione Granger, more than a half-wolf.

A ridiculous thought came to her mind—

_What came first, love of danger or love of wolves?_

_What came first, the chicken or the egg—_

The silence swelled up in a glorious symphony, swallowing her in its terrible beauty and sucking her downward, downwards into its hungry maw. The pull was so strong, this deep pull from her very soul, some music dark and deep, beyond Mozart, Grieg, Tchaikovsky—a silence beyond the stars, beyond oblivion—

_Is this why he joined Voldemort's side—did he want danger, or did he want a wolf?_

_Artemis, who are you—_

She ducked from her cover, a curse forming on her lips—

A unicorn stood before her, as she had never seen one before—the ones Hagrid had shown her had been pale stars compared to this, for this one was as a diamond, a supernova, something beyond even the most idealistic of words…

_Merlin_, she thought. She could make out its eyes, large, blue, the blue of summer skies, the blue of the predawn twilight, the blue of another's eyes, a mere memory of a memory.

It stood there. She could not help but run through the potion attributes as she stared, uses of powdered horn, its mane, its blood—immortality lay within a unicorn's blood, and with it, power, power even true wolves would emvy—

The unicorn stepped back.

Unicorns were attracted to innocence.

A terrible pain rose within her. _Don't go—I'm sorry—I can't help myself— it's just how I am—_

It stood still, still like dust in a tomb, like the stars in their death.

_I know I have ulterior motives, _she tried, _but I'm here to help. _

The eyes, so blue, so deep, like great wells, fathomless, beautiful—they seemed to look _into _her, not _at _her as they had moments before, questioning, seeking, knowing, omniscient. Someone could tell her the unicorn was God in that moment and she would believe it without question

Breaking the silence felt like sacrilege before this wonder: she tried using thought again. _Things haven't been very pleasant. I'm trying to make things better for all of us. _

The eyes turned deeper yet, and she lost all thought: they came closer, and closer, until she could breathe the faint scent of allspice, sweet, sickly-sweet death, like Lupin's scent, and she found herself, then, on the unicorn's back, and the ride was smooth, slipping through the forest in a ride as a needle threading silk, a dream, and she drifted into a haze where there only a sweetness like the taste of a first kiss, the scent of vanilla, the song of the dove and the feel of hope beneath the hand, trembling there, but soft and warm and tremulous as hope ever has been.

**:i:**

The Mnemosynaether was named after Mnemosyne, who, in Hellenic Greek mythology, was the "Titan of Memory", mother of the Muses, and one of the cleverer of Zeus' lust-objects: she escaped Hera's jealous attentions entirely, which is more than poor Io or Leto can say.


	4. Nix and Nox

_The_

R A P U N Z E L

C O M P L E X

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Four

Nix and Nox

"It is better to be governed well by sinners than to be misgoverned by saints."

Michael Lind

It had been so innocent, in a way—but even as she dismounted and saw the darkness in the unicorn's eyes, she felt a deep welling of shame that made her eyes water, as if cutting onions.

The unicorn gazed into her, as if wondering what it had done was right; the tears spilled over Hermione's cheeks. She had never cried much, especially in the past few months, but these she couldn't hold back. It was as if there was another Hermione, another soul within her, so full of sorrow and regret that it was all it could do, to surface when despair drew it out of her like silver wire.

She scarce noticed as the unicorn's head dipped forward, drawing its horn across her arm, for all she could feel were the tears on her cheeks, a painless sort of regret.

The unicorn walked away like autumn rain, so quiet, so calm. _To find some sacred pool, to cleanse itself of me and my filth?_ she wondered, _or escaping, in fear of what I may yet do?_

She looked down at her arm; the unicorn's mark was as a silver lattice, superimposed over the periwinkle of her veins and the sallow white of her arms. She had the unicorn's grace, but not its favor, not its heart—

But she had arrived; that dream of wonder, that dream every little girl has as they lay in their beds, thinking of Prince Charming and fairy friends and diamonds, riding the unicorn… it was over. Indeed, it was as if she had slept, for now, awake, she felt purpose seeping through her veins from the regretful soul.

There was nothing discernibly different about the current scenery, which was as purposefully dark and dismal as the Forbidden Forest's fringes. The trees were simple bastions, unassuming, and in their humbleness mightier than even Hogwart's towers, soaring into the emerald-dark canopy. The ground was beaten earth, a sure sign of nearby gatherings, though there was no direction to it, no path to follow.

She peered closer into the gloom, and it was not all dark; magic was a sparkling haze in her mind's eye, so very unlike the brilliant stars of the Hogwarts library: this was a fog, continuous, rich, so thick she took it in with every breath. Every disturbance—her and her artificial magic, the unicorn and its soaring pureness, even the cry of a kittyhawk as it swooped down and took a life—sent ripples through it that made her wand resonate. Touching it, she could feel it vibrating gently beneath her fingers, like a cat's throat as it purred. The magic of the forest was not at all a precise thing—_which is ironic_, she mused_, considering this mission is perhaps the most ambiguous thing I have ever ventured since the Yule Ball._

_Yes, Viktor was very ambiguous… I had no mission, only my own curiosity._

_But I'm still curious, aren't I?_

She brushed the thought away; such carnal things didn't belong in this forest.

Closing her eyes, she tried to sense the magic, sense where it was strongest; wherever the battle was fought, it must now be a place of great magic, where the greatest of the centaur-kings had fought and died. Slowly, she dipped her mind into the haze, slipping into it like warm waters in the Caribbean, with a soft breeze above and blue sea below—

She smiled to herself, and began walking through the saturated air. _If a spell is cast in a forest and nobody's there, is it still magic?_

Suddenly, she stood still, still as the moon as the lycanthropes cry out their despair on a winter night, breathing in the æther as it infused her soul with a terrible loneliness.

_If a spell is cast in a forest and the caster dies, is it still magic?_

Silence—the sea as the sun is cast down for that final time, so still, so very still as the world begins to die.

_What about the caster—_

_Does anyone care?_

She knew the sound of thunder; but this was not thunder, their approach, rather, a rain, pattering down in a collective torrent as the storm neared. The rain drenched her in the sound, half-drowning, even, for she could not find herself and take a breath of humanity.

From the shadows, lightning, now, forking out and around her in a burst of dun. Her growing migraine struggled to pound in rhythm, but could not, for the hooves did not land in unison, or even in semblance of a pattern. The resulting headache was something akin to medley, with gut-wrenching turns of key and tempo, pounding, pounding, _pounding_.

The centaurs circled round her, and stilled as an eye of a hurricane; but the walls loomed in the distant, for their eyes were black with viewed blasphemy, and their hooves fidgeted, as if yearning for soft flesh beneath them.

_They're guards_, she realized, _guards of the centaur-king's body._

…_they don't want a human here, no, they don't want my filthy human hands touching what is most sacred. _

One came forward; a memory tugged at her, the way a child might pull at her mother's skirt when the bogeyman neared; similar centaur, similar attitude, so long ago... "Who are you, _human_?"

Hostility was only expected, but the sort of eloquence that could save her needed rehearsal. What could she say to turn their minds, what could she say to sway their hearts? "A pilgrim," she said at last.

"A pilgrim?" His laugh was high and harsh, like a raven's, as it watched the bear die below and clacked its beak in anticipation of warm flesh.

She waited for the echoes to dissipate, taking her time. If she spoke quickly, he'd find a fight and she'd lose; but through careful words and a careful war, perhaps she might survive. "Here, there is no War: I come to learn."

He pounded a hoof angrily on the ground. "Learn? _Learn?_ Go to your books: do not come to witness what you will not understand."

She held out her palms, face-up; a universal symbol of peace, even across species. "One can only try."

The centaur reared up; his hooves gleamed oddly in the gloom, like crippled stars. "Spare us, _human_. We do not want your kind here. Have your War. We do not care."

The wills of the others were connected to him, and as he drew closer so did they: and how those hooves glimmered, like old katanas, too long on the mantel but still shining beneath the tarnish, still had that sanguine edge—

_The Dark Lord tempts them_, she thought, drawing back her sleeve and baring the unicorn's mark, _and so must I_.

"It's false!" he cried, recoiling in surprise. "A false mark!"

The mark glinted like the white of a winter moon, cold and distant and so very austere.

She let her sleeve fall back down. "Are you suggesting coercion?"

Perhaps it was a rather antagonistic tactic; but effective nonetheless. He was driven to a fatal outburst: "You—you—"

"I did _what_, exactly?" She raked her eyes over the others in the patrol, tearing their attention to her; they now bled shame, for they averted their eyes even as they listened. The unicorn, she knew, was worshipped as a small god amongst them, for they had cleared a path before it before; the mark had seemed an expression of pure grace and acceptance. Though she didn't know of its true significance among them, she had hazarded a guess, and she was mercifully right. "A unicorn brought me here; my intentions are honorable."

Victory in a single action and few words; he backed down and gestured in the glade's direction.

She could help but feel a sunburst of pride, and had no reason to restrain it. Her solution had been elegant, logical, taking a source of reverence and putting it on her sound. Perhaps it _had_ been coercion, of sort—but they didn't need to know of that dark look in clear eyes, the shame that welled up at even the thought, like bile, bitter and biting—

As the centaur-guards dissipated into the shadows, she drew her robes closer around her. It have been the only way past them, but even now she thought of other words, other ways to prevent that terrible fallacy of the shadowed truth—

She walked a corridor of malachite shadows, between the trees, silent guards. Before her was a greater glade, filled with the thick gloom of the forest—but also with centaurs, which swirled in dun with the darkness.

The centaurs stood, silent, still. There were hundreds, at the least; from Britain alone or around the world, representatives only or every sympathetic pilgrim, she could not tell. She was near the back of the great mass, where the indefinite boundary of the clearing stretched.

They spoke an older, Gaelic tongue, whispers between themselves as they awaited some holy moment. She could understand the gist of it from her studies, but the subtleties were drowned in the intricate whispers and a tide of breathing, stretching out in a silence not meant for curious minds.

The rush of it all surprised her: one moment, a rage against the blasphemy of humans, the next, pilgrims. Were words to be spoken here in remembrance of their fallen king, were rites to be performed over the bones of Lord Chiron? She knew so little, she felt weak, like a child, the child she had sworn never to be again.

Lupin had been vague on the methodology, deliberately so: was she to put on a display of power, or win them with words? Befriend the best of them, the chieftains, or find a voice in the silent majority?

If this was her test into something beyond decrypting, was it to become an agent, an unofficial Auror? Was she to join Lupin as he traveled into forests of night to sway his werewolf kin; to lurk in the bars like Tonks, gathering information even as she gathered men into her arms? Or was she to be more belligerent, a full predator, stalking the prey with Mad-Eye, watching them from afar until they could go in for the kill?

She would be able to hunt.

Decrypting, it had been nothing more than picking the bones! Merlin, she would be able to run, to hunt, she would be free!

_I will be a wolf, a wolf like Artemis._

_Artemis is a wolf_.

_Will I hunt him, will I be the one to bring him down, will I be the one to see him bleed?_

…_or are they hunting me now, is that why the Pensieve was left; to weaken the prey so in the hunt, it might not even struggle as the teeth sink in—_

Her thoughts turned as the centaurs became silent, expectant, like a father in the maternity ward, head in his hands.

They crowded about in a silent sort of mob, more frustrating than the rush and tangle of Hogwarts hallways between classes, or the mad spin of a carnival crowd. She could not brush them aside, she could not move past; nor could she see over them with any amount of ease.

It was more frustrating than anything else indeed! For _something_ was happening, something that froze them like the silence of a winter solstice night. What, exactly, she could not say, for there was no sound, no assurances for her mind, which spun like a mad dreidal on the holy Hanukkah eve.

While helping Harry prepare for third challenge of the Triwizard Cup, she had come across a useful spell; though it was not so much a spell as a mental discipline. It, in essence, was a 'zoom' feature for the eye; though she wouldn't be able to see something, say, a hundred meters away, it was useful for seeing around corners and such. It took no incantation or wand-waving; in fact, there was a minimal amount of magic involved, so it was almost undetectable, even by the magic-sensing. Though Harry had never quite gotten the hang of it, she found it had occasional uses.

Superimposed on her current view was another image, focusing at the center of it all: there was a blank space in the world where the grasses swirled round in emerald shadows and the trees did not dare veil the stars, about five meters wide at the center of the depression.

She looked for magic there: though nothing was happening! No surge in magic as he rose from the grave, not even the minutest of novas in her mind's eye! And yet, still, they waited, waited, _waited_, as all their eyes settled in the quiet certainty of the faithful—

An apparition faded into view—and of a curious sort, less substantial than the Hogwarts breed. Had she believed in souls, she could have argued it was because centaur souls were lesser for being only part-human. Indeed, there was scarce enough definition to the ghost to tell his features: he had no crown, no symbol of his status. In death, all his nobility had been stripped from him, and nothing could distinguish him from the basest. His eyes, like watered milk given to the pauper's child, swept over the crowd. His mouth moved but made no sound, a marionette with crippled strings, manipulated in vain from beyond the veil. His hooves sank into the ground even as he evanesced, as if in quicksand.

Perhaps, in earlier centuries, he had spoken to them, words of wisdom and judgment that rang clear like clarion bells on Christmas day, but now, two-thousand years after his death, he could not sustain his spirit flesh even on his deathday, he could not stand, could not speak, could not even raise his hand—

As he sunk away into the loam, there was a collective silence peculiar to holy sights: the nearest approximation was church, though there, there were always those who laughed and whispered in the pews, the babies crying, the weak coughs of the elderly.

"He is not dead," spoke a voice of silk and silver, "if you believe."

_What—?_

She turned her mind's eye across the glade, through and through the ranks of dun, but could not find the source of the voice, which now echoed like a hollow drum with the cadence of rebellion.

Murmured exclamations rippled through the glade as chords on a harp in response, sweeping out and stilling the silence to a magnificent question mark.

"Lord Chiron," spoke red velvet and rich alto, "he does not have to be but an apparition."

_Who—_

That voice, that sound of sterling-and-sapphire, starlings at dusk, that voice that seduced the snake—

It resonated, and a thought came to her: _A wolf—a wolf named Artemis._

_I have to find a wolf named Artemis—_

—_and I have found him._

_Artemis, lover of the Dark Lord, the pet of the gods, Ganymede._

—_no, captive for his abilities, Artemis, you are not evil—_

—_why, why do you do this—?_

"Lord Chiron," the voice spoke, striking the very heartstrings of the centaurs like a dulcimer, for their yearning for their dead king had pulled their souls taut with grief, "he may once more walk beneath these shadowed eves."

She found him now in her mind's eye: he stood, a sliver of black against the green-gray gloom. His skin stood out, moon-pale against the eve. And even so!—he walked on air as if it were even ground, pacing to and fro.

"He is not,"—like fire and water, like sun and stars, like life and death—"for those who follow me."

Artemis was before her, Artemis, this young god in all his glory, and all she could do was watch as he raised his wand—

It was not a spell as she knew it: she saw nothing. The centaurs, though, must have seen some magic she could not, for many whickered their unease, and all watched Lord Chiron as he fell down further into the ground, invisible but for his silhouette, like a tracing of Sagittarius.

There was the silence between the stars, between the moments of anticipation and consummation. She held her breath with the rest of them, drawn in by the same net of that fiercely beautiful fisherman.

Crowds do not move as one: they ripple, relativity, reactions spreading outward in ever-widening circles. The whispers reached her in a wave of wonder; and she could not believe.

_But—_

_No, it has to be necromancy, Artemis the Wolf, he has done this, he has brought the dead to life—_

_But even Voldemort could not raise the dead, and we know he has tried…_

…_and Artemis can?_

_It must be an illusion, it must be, it cannot be,** it cannot be**—_

_No one can bring back the dead, no one can pass the veil—_

_Even wolves must resort to the basest tricks, now and then—_

—_even Artemis, this young god?_

She turned her mind's eye; 'Lord Chiron', as Artemis called him, stood as he had not in two-thousand years. He was a fine shade of brown-black in his equine part, and his human body was lithe and lean. His face was as strong as an aristocrat's, knowing his way; and fine as a bard's, the dreamer, watching the world with hooded eyes. Dark-dusk he was, from his black hair swept back into a leather thong, and eyes, dark like the forest's heart.

The centaurs stilled again, outwards, until all was silent.

Artemis stood as a god-king, lucid, emanating not an hazy aura but light like that from a newborn star, from the ashes of old, so bright the thought itself blinded her.

_Artemis—_

_You bring the dead to life—_

—_and I, who lives, to sort of death?_

_Merlin! how can this world be so cruel?_

Lord Chiron spoke: but she could scarce pull away from that star, pacing the shattered air as if the world was his—and, indeed, it could so easily be so. "Am I such a soul, to be from the dust returned, only to be such—"_ pause, eye of the hurricane_ "—a god?"

Artemis came down, falling to a kneeled bow before Lord Chiron; his robes fell around him like curtains of night. He spoke no words; his head was bowed, and his victory was thus a proud moment for a proud man humbled.

Both of them knew the art of the spoken word. Much of Lord Chiron's glory had come from his voice, which, though gentle, could bring fire to the soul. He spoke not to Artemis, but to the ground, though he faced the bowed man as if a king, chiding a servent. "And you have done this deed? You risked damnation by your deeds, for the goodwill of a sorry race? It is blasphemy in your world to raise the grateful dead; yet that you do, and at mere whim?"

From some invisible cue, Artemis stood and met the eyes of the centaur-prophet. "Baldir was lost for lack of tears; yet you were taken unfairly, while all the world wept. I give you the choice you never had."

"You make the choice for me. Can I take my life when it was stolen in greed and returned in hope?" Lord Chiron's eyes swept over Artemis, a blur before him on the ground, white and black. How the centaurs turned to him, how they waited for his word! She had never seen how one man could stir a heart by word alone except Dumbledore; but he was a poor example, for there were always exceptions, those who thought him a fool… this was so complete, it took her as well. "You have done right, child, but O! it is so wrong."

Artemis stood, head still inclined. Still, he said no words; but she knew there were no words for him to say.

It was all a jumble, now; Artemis had it all planned out, and it had executed perfectly, and Lord Chiron had taken but a moment of their time. She had been swept along with these grand events, even kneeling with all the centaurs as the chieftains came forward to speak to Lord Chiron with quiet words. The crowd was now a press, crushing forward to see their god-king.

Necromancy—if Lord Chiron was not, in fact, an illusion—was highly illegal in the Wizarding world. Even forcing souls from beyond the veil was illegal; but to coax them into a body, and to make that body as young as the dawn… Even Death Eaters, she imagined, would have trouble with such actions, as incredible (and unbelievable, she admitted) as they were.

Yet the centaurs took it in stride, never taking action against Artemis' words even as he declared his purpose. The thought was inevitable: was necromancy practiced and _accepted_ amongst centaurs? Bringing back the dead could not be possible, or else they would have raised Lord Chiron centuries ago; but perhaps talk of it, and smaller variations, with animals, or talking to shades, was commonplace. They had magic of their own, she could see it in the thick haze of magic around them, different, wilder than hers, but no less potent.

Now, swept out in the tide, what could she grasp as she was washed out to sea? Her test stood before her, and the question was bold; answers now ran through her head:

Lord Chiron could not be touched. The means were sanctioned by the outcome, so necromancy could not be put into question, even if… questionable amongst centaurs. The bearer, perhaps, the tempter?—but Artemis was as young as her, and he knew the words, he knew the way to speak to them, exacting to etiquette codes she'd never know. They'd love him, even if he was human: reverence followed the man who stole its heart.

But she could not lose this! Once they lost the centaurs, they lost the Forbidden Forest. Centaurs were sentient, they could raid, they could plan, they could guide… they were the only ones who truly knew what monsters lay within the forest's depths. To think of how they could be harnessed, how they could turn from a protective moat to a ring of spears, closing ever-inward around Hogwarts…

The tide swelled; and she was deposited on the rim of the centaur-sea, clinging to the barren island of Lord Chiron and Artemis.

They looked, in truth, no different in person; but both she had only seen before with her mind's eye, and in person they lost much of the mystery around them but gained a solidarity, substance.

She felt an odd sort of boldness take her by the gut and make her kneel. Their eyes fell on her; both, evidently, had not known of another human presence at Sanguinius. She kept her head bowed, praying for a phrase; she did not know what to say, did not know the words…

A glance must have been exchanged, questioning: "She's not _mine_," Artemis said; his tone was elegant, condescending, dismissive.

_The voice of a wolf…_

_The voice of the wolf can shatter the heart if heard for too long._

_Already, it presses deep, this knife of his._

"I am my own," she replied sharply, rising, "and my own I shall stay." She turned to Lord Chiron, meeting his eyes; they had the same dreamlike intensity as Dumbledore's, and she found herself meeting them with equity after a short incline of her head in greeting. "Lord Chiron."

"One of Dumbledore's," Artemis cut in; yet it was hardly an insult, not even the same dismissal as a moment ago, but mere fact.

She didn't dare direct argument, though the truth seared the air and made Lord Chiron raise a questioning brow. "I come as a pilgrim; I was curious about your teachings, but human lore was insufficient."

Lord Chiron's lips upturned, like a man smiling in his sleep. "And so you went on a pilgrimage?"

"I cared; my people didn't." She spread out her hands, palms up. "So I came. There is nowhere else." She was distancing herself from the traditional centaur view of wizards in not caring for centaur rituals; perhaps it might give her an ear, if not the heart?

Lord Chiron considered her, his eyes like a dark dream. A memory surfaced, of her, standing in Dumbledore's office, praying he did not see her half-truths, and inwardly she squirmed. The situations were too alike for her comfort.

From the corner of her eye she could see Artemis; his eyes, too, bored into hers, that spectacular shade of blue that drew her in like a well of clear water. It took all her temptation not to turn and speak to him, to say sweet nothings until he took her in his arms—

_Merlin, not now!_

_My life is in another's hands, and all I can think about is the enemy, the wolf?_

…_but he has someone, he does, the Dark Lord…_

"I am meeting the chieftains in a nearby glade," he said at last. "It would be my honor if you joined us."

She bowed her head to hide her tight smile. "No," she said softly. "It is mine."

When she raised her head, she remained silent, standing there and carefully avoiding Artemis' gaze; though she knew he stared at her, pondering, questioning. _Does he think I'm beautiful?_ She wondered, and banished the thought—but more would come to take its place, and all she could think about was Artemis, Artemis the wolf, who stood behind her now like a blue-eyed demon, a product of her dreams that had escaped and become so much more.

**:i:**

After a time, Lord Chiron led her and Artemis away, into the ever-deepening shadows that turned black-purple with the approaching eve. She was silent, though words were exchanged between Artemis and Lord Chiron as they discussed the subtleties of centaur culture. Though she listened, she did not take part; she would look a fool, and lose her standing. Artemis had done his research; she had not.

_It was how I looked at Lord Chiron_, she thought, _not my words. It was the way I could meet his eyes that let me join him_.

It was a cruel thought; it was that she could hold a gaze and nothing more that she was allowed into this smallest of confidences. She was no wolf; she was only one for dealing with them…

Lord Chiron was a wolf; but he was so like Dumbledore, she could feel it in his steady, piercing black gaze, in his slow, elegant voice, in his careful phrasings. Would Dumbledore be remembered with such venerable feelings two-thousand years later, a lord who fell in battle and doomed the cause?—

_Bad thoughts_, she thought, and shivered; there was something in the air, surely, that made her think such things.

But there was nothing to say; Lord Chiron and Artemis walked a little ahead of her, murmuring amongst themselves, just quiet enough for exclusion.

There were no seats; centaurs stood, and not only did they stand but pace: the seven chieftains were not still, as human leaders during councils, but pacing, pacing like worried men or bored children. The ground was of hard stone, granite flecked with large phenocrysts, citrine crystals that winked like teasing cats underfoot, and schorl, sticking out here and there like spears, blood-covered in the shadows, and massy micas, flakes and sheets of it strewn about like window panes. The trees around were worn, gnarled, almost stones themselves in their antiquity.

At Lord Chiron's entrance, many looked in his direction; though they had none of the reverence the other centaurs reserved for the god-king. They were familiar with him: proven by Lord Chiron's acceptance of a whole-hearted embrace by a roan mare the shade of wild summer strawberries, and hair a similar hue that was long enough to cover certain... aspects.

The embrace was short; she slipped out as fast as she had entered it and turned towards Artemis, who was silent and still. For a moment, it seemed as if she was going to embrace him as well: but she fell short, clasping his hand within hers, which were pale and moonlike. "My gratitude, human."

He inclined his head; his dark hair fell forward as he did so. Hermione, ten paces away, felt the urge to brush it back from his brow. "Hecate: it is my honor."

_He knows her name… she must be ancient, though her face, scarce older than twenty. Who is she, what has she done that he knows her name?_

Hecate's eyes were brilliant and bright, of no particular hue; the closest approximation was gray, though it was not the dull hue of the clouds, nor the sea as all the sky wept. Hermione was struck by them; Hecate must be a beauty amongst centaurs with her vibrancy, unless their aesthetic standards were quite different. "Do you have a tongue? I did not see you with the necromancer."

"I do," Hermione replied; she was unsure of what action to take, so she stood still.

"But not a mind, evidently," Hecate continued, coming closer. "Leave. Your master calls for his dog."

Hermione's eyes darted around; the centaurs were all listening, watching.

_She's testing me_, Hermione realized, _but is the question?_

"I came on my own accord," she replied. "I am no necromancer; only a pilgrim. There were only books where I came from; I wanted more than that."

"Do you have a wand?"

Hecate's manner was curiously aggressive; meeting her eyes was like staring into a fire. "Rarely used; if magic is needed in... situations, it is obvious I have done something wrong."

Hecate spoke for them: "Do you have a lover?"

Hermione stared; then realized the question, flowering in her mind like belladonna. She bared her arm, exposing the lattice of silver, like an ore vein, on her arm. It glowed in the purple eve; it tinged Hecate's skin, already moon-pale, periwinkle, like the first of the spring flowers, still touched by winter.

Centaurs rewarded the elegant reply; her silence was met with approval.

"Very well then," Hecate said; she spread out her white arms like a mother-goddess. "You may listen to our counsel."

**:i:**

I was going for a grand, epic sort of feel with the whole raising-the-dead thing, but it feels like it fell short. Sorry says it's because I insisted on cutting the original down so much but… oh ARGH. This story is really frustrating.

I'll have a discussion of this on my lj which may or may not be interesting, depending on how 'in to it' you peeps are. Sorry said she might drop by too, so we'll see how that goes.

Anywho, don't expect any details on what, exactly, Artemis did for a few chapters. Which takes forever. Sorry a bazillion times over.

Thanks for reading! CC is, as always appreciated.


	5. Speculative Fiction

_The_

R A P U N Z E L  
C O M P L E X

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Five

Speculative Fiction

"When the senses are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness, who can stand?"

William Blake

There was a temptation to stand there, dazed; but she bowed her head to Hecate and retreated to the edge of the glade. There was a particularly prominent quartz crystal, the color of the midwinter sun; she stood before it and watched, and pondered:

She assumed 'Lord Chiron' was the Chiron of the Greeks, trainer of heroes; she could not ignore such an obvious connection. Perhaps he had become disillusioned by the Hellenic movement towards the power of many versus the power of one: a trainer of heroes was little use when a hero was useless to society. No Theseus was needed in a time when politics had little to do with monsters; no Jason when gold was more readily taken for power versus glory. Perhaps he had disappeared, and brought with him his kindred, not the licentious Sabine-thieves but those with magic in their blood and stars in their eyes, moving to the forests of the world where a single soul could still be great…

But it was all speculation; and watching the pacing of the centaurs, she knew there was little she could do, for now, but wait and perhaps speculate more.

Hecate had trotted back to the glade edge, and paced her area quickly, passing between the citrine crystals like a flame. Hermione's eyes followed her; it was hard not to, with such coloring. The other chieftains were dun besides her, sandstone before the ruby. Was she the mate to Lord Chiron…? It was odd, associating the two; one an obviously legendary leader renown for his quiet wisdom, and the other a bright, belligerent flame. They had spared no particularly sentimental words, and no actions besides the brief embrace which was of the variety exchanged between brothers.

The Hecate of the Greeks was a goddess in her own right, no minor character except to the patriarchal Hellenic movement, who combined her role with other goddesses. She was a goddess of witchcraft and crossroads, and another personification of the moon alongside Selene and Artemis. Her name was used alongside that of the Furies and Nemesis as a curse.

She stretched her mind, struggling to recall any small details that could give her insight into Hecate. She was no virtuoso with mythology; though it showed up frequently in Wizarding histories, she had never made any particularly deep studies—the past interested her far less than the present.

Her mind scrabbled back to Professor Binns. The development of classical alchemy had developed largely in southern Germany, where the cult of Epona, a horse goddess, was especially rampant. Centaurs, she knew, had an intuitive grasp of herbology and organic alchemy; had it thus developed? She knew recorded history was decidedly skewed against nonhumans. Perhaps this was the herd of centaurs Hecate ruled over; and perhaps her legend had percolated to Greece, changing from centaur queen to witch goddess along the way.

She considered their acceptance of necromancy; Hecate had always been associated with the dead—

In all her classes, all her books, all her previous encounters with centaurs, there was never once any implication that the centaurs might have ties to necromancy. In fact, their worship of the natural and their abhorrence of the artificial magicks—transfiguration, arithmancy—all pointed to the very unnatural magic of raising what fate ordained deceased. She had made a blind assumption before, in seeing their own blind acceptance of Artemis' actions; but the more she thought of it, the stranger it was.

Yet what process was more natural than death?

She shivered, and brought her robes closer around her. The night was deepening; the air was colder. The centaurs were mere blurs to her, even Hecate; a smoldering ember in the gloom. Even Lord Chiron was nothing more than a shifting shadow, and Artemis a pale face, a ghost in the gloom; was he, too, dead, was that why he possessed that most fantastic of powers—?

Irreverent. She brushed those thoughts aside and improved her night vision with a touch of wandless, voiceless magic. A few centaurs—Hecate included—jerked towards her, though did not stare.

Curious. Centaurs, evidently, could detect magic, even the wandless varieties that were hell for her to trace. So little was known about centaurs, so very little—

But how had _he_ learned so much? The thought grated on her as the centaurs wheeled around, waiting for full dusk. She had narrowed it down to some sort of contact within the centaurs, either forced or voluntary—probably voluntary, lubricated with a few bribes. Lord Voldemort was very neat in his affairs; he didn't like having to back out of anything with the danger of tripping over his messes.

Still, to memorize the idiosyncrasies of centaur etiquette was a feat. Even with her abandoned S.P.E.W., she hadn't gone that far into House Elf subculture.

Someone had outdone her; the thought grinded on her like stale cheese on a grater. _Artemis_ had done his research, _Artemis_ had come prepared—

But that was old Hermione—_no, not even me, another, a child…_

_I have no need for competitiveness; pride is irrelevant._

…_yet here I am._

—and across the glade, towards that elegant splinter of a man.

_Yet here **we** are_.

She turned her thoughts towards him; _because he is my competitor for the centaurs' goodwill_, she told herself, _not because of anything else—_

His face was paler, more drawn, than in the Pensieve. The crescents under his eyes were as if someone had smeared mulberries beneath them, though some small amount of cosmetic magic had gone in to disguising his condition. His eyes were thus shadowed; they were darker, deeper, and all the more compelling. She had twin difficulties: one in looking away when she met those twilight depths, and another in holding that dark, probing gaze, however irritated she might become at herself.

His hair was almost girlishly long, and had the tendency to fall in front of his eyes. His long robes, classical though impractical, were another flourish to something beyond the inner scientist; though her hormones applauded, she found such aesthetic drama silly. Long robes, even if easily shed, could get in the way in a duel. Beneath them, he appeared to be wearing a fine silk shirt, dark blue or black; either way, it matched his eyes in a likewise aesthetic touch she found irritatingly pleasing.

She tore her eyes away from his needle-of-a-figure and looked at the grove itself. They were waiting for something, obviously; she suspected it was midnight, the time of deepest magicks, though it could also be waiting for the arrival of another centaur, or even another creature entirely that formed the council (the unicorn perhaps?—they held it in such high regard…)

For now, they paced; the tension surged within her like the tide of night, watching them trace frantic circles of idleness. No words were exchanged; her thoughts turned sickly, turning to leprous ends in the heat of fever.

More to keep her own imagination in check than anything, she examined the crystals in the grove. She was no geologist, but she knew they could not have grown here naturally—though 'naturally' was a warped word in the Wizarding world. The crystals were too large, too perfect, too abundant, and the surrounding rock was not the sort of matrix in which the minerals could grow even under perfect circumstances. They had been transported here; but for what purpose?

Aesthetics were out of the question. The centaurs did not seem the sort to construct grand _anythings_—no temples, no tombs, no palaces. She suspected it was a sort of focus; this would be a place of great magicks where things could be created that should only find life in the imagination.

Using crystals as a focus, she knew, was a very old and practical way of doing things: Wizard architects and engineers for thousands of years had often used them for levitating larger stone slabs. While searching for a lost child, a crystal focus would often be used to scan large areas at a time for that particular presence. Great spells of blindness or sleep could be cast upon large armies, dependant on whom the spellcaster favored for victory. Even Pensieves used a sort of lesser focus to guide thoughts, often dim and half-remembered, into its depths, and to make the memories more lucid when its usage was reversed. The practice had been recorded with non-human races as well: the merpeople of the Mediterranean would use crystal focuses to magnify their voices across the sea and thus draw sailors in—until various Ministries banned the practice. The Sirens needed no more infamy in the modern world. This it struck her with little surprise that centaurs, who were as intelligent if not more so than the merpeople, might also use this powerful tool.

But what magicks would centaurs use…? Running through her mind, she could think of no magicks associated with centaurs. It was the same problem as before—though evidence pointed to a necromantic society, they _had_ no capability for magic! She distinctly remembered a report—having done research on how the Ministry treats other nonhuman creatures for S.P.E.W.—in which a full team of zoologists had done a complete search for magical capabilities in centaurs: hypnotic voices, chameleon, etc., and had concluded that their only magical trait was a predisposition to the Sight.

What would they use a focus for, then?—it gnawed on her mind. Whatever it was, she was now quite convinced that _that_ was what they were waiting for; some great spell, some mission that ran unspoken through the centaur council and they evidently assumed she was aware of.

—_does Artemis know?_

_Can he read their minds, can he see their plans?—_

—_or does he not need to, he must know everything…_

_Ridiculous, no man can know everything, he simply did his research, which I clearly did not.._

…_but can he read their minds, can he see their plans?—_

—_can he see mine, can he see how infatuated I am—_

She was hardly an accomplished Legilimens; Snape, in his cruel patronage of her, had insisted on lessons over the summer—_if only to keep up with Potter_, he had sneered. He taunted her often with that; that Potter was a natural, that perhaps he was more a wolf than her, for Potter, at least, was a challenge to read and more pleasurable to do so, that her mind was a fruit excessively tasted and had lost its sweetness, all this as he delved in and _laughed—_

She shook her head. She was the one who had asked Snape's patronage originally last spring after first witnessing the Death Eaters in action and feeling so very weak, hating that feeling and wanting it to go away so badly that she turned to the only Death Eater she could trust—

Even as a First Year, he had fascinated her with his deliberate malice and uncaring genius, the sarcastic, the sardonic, the sadistic. A hated and twisted fascination, perhaps: she had buried this her first few years, covering it with a thick coat of loathing for Slytherin that was only natural for a Gryffindor.

But as she got older, she learned to find the beauty of a curved knife in Snape, the way his mind had folded and curled over the years into some nameless complex. When he had first seen this fascination in her mind, he had given his typical laugh; cruel, but short enough for sophistication. No words; only the laugh. A barbed insult would have been a kinder knife.

It had been enough for shame: Harry and Ron could not comprehend her sudden sharpness with them, and in a typically petty attempt at rationalization had put it aside to her 'time of month'. Though she apologized after the emotion of the encounter with Snape had trickled deeper into her heart, it didn't keep the shame away, welling up even now, nearly six months later.

Then there had been the summer, that glorious summer with the Order at Grimmauld Place. She saw her parents twice; and during each meeting, her mind was still turning from the lessons Snape gave her, the studies, the secrets, even as they embraced her and said grace before dinner and kissed her farewell.

_Can Artemis read my mind?—_

—_is Artemis not a wolf equal to Severus Snape? Is Artemis not a wolf who had clearly captured Voldemort's limited favor? Is Artemis not a wolf who had raised the very dead—_

_He can read my mind._

She shivered, turning to other thoughts. It was too dark to be thinking of such things.

It was the dark of a vampire's soul; it was the dark of the raven upon the mantel. She could see it now, how the haze of magic began to swell like a tide with approaching midnight, brightening exponentially. Fascinated, she watched the haze become particulars, streams flowing down the long striations on the tourmaline crystals; not through the crystals, but upon, each facet glimmering like a thousand falls down a mountainside on a sunny day. She could see how it all worked now; the citrine crystals directed the magic towards the tourmaline, and the striations directed downwards, deep underground to some source, some battery—the forest's very heart.

And what would happen when midnight passed and there was no discharge, nothing to siphon off the power?—

—it would explode.

Her mind spun, linking pieces together like pearls onto a string. The haze was the debris from past explosions, when the Source was emptied to its entirety, thinning out towards the edge of the Forest. Creatures could only use magic in certain forms; much like lungs and gills for oxygen, pulling it from the air and water respectively. One of Planks' few good lessons had dealt with how magical creatures got their magic: werewolves, vampires, basilisks, acromantulas and others, all fearful things, could only absorb magic slowly through them, needing a steady environment. Other, less terrible creatures, like unicorns and hippogriffs, were more adapted to pulses, like being near places of power.

If the Source could not discharge in steady pulses, it would only explode.

The predators of the Forest would flourish in the magical debris field, while the peace-loving beings would languish, their power spread out too thin for them to absorb.

In _Hogwarts: A History_, the Forest had been a playground for young Wizards when Hogwarts was first opened after the fall of the Roman Empire—but now it was a tomb for the curious.

The centaurs revered the necromantic arts: yet they had no magic. When they lost control of the Source, they could no longer continue their practices—

—it was two-thousand years ago Lord Chiron had fallen, and out of all the necromancers of the centaurs, none could raise him.

_Merlin—_

Lord Chiron was the one who controlled the Source.

And now Lord Voldemort would control the greatest well of magic in all of Britain.

It all spun together, so elegantly, like a spider's web; and here she was, entrapped, but still admiring—

—and across the glade was the spider, and he saw her look his way and smiled, _smiled_ with that cold smile of Voldemort himself.

Lord Chiron took to the center; there was an emptiness to his expression, the sort she had seen on the faces of enchanters as they cast the most powerful of spells. He was in the Source, now; he was breathing into it control, discipline that had been so lax for two thousand years. The centaurs stood still, now; as if bracing themselves, even Hecate; she stood like a flame stilled as if in a Muggle photograph, something incomprehensible and dull to Wizards but still so beautiful.

Artemis closed his eyes, slipping into something the same; or perhaps mere thought, she could not tell. She traced the curve of his eyelids, beautifully pale in the night. He was ten strides away; she could go over now and touch them, perhaps then the eyes would open and he would see her—

_Stop it, Hermione Granger! You are not some infatuated schoolgirl, you are the brightest witch of the century—_

It was the tsunami that had spawned a thousand Noahs and Arks across the world; it was the greatest avalanche of the Himalayas; it was the lightning flung from God's Own Hand; it washed her away into the roiling darkness of the deep, it flung from the height of consciousness to the most primal depths of fear; it blinded and burned and boiled her very blood.

And yet she still stood.

There was a sudden clarity to the world. She could feel every part of her; _feel_, not just be dimly aware that yes, she still had a hand, yes, her foot was in front of her… Her magical nightvision, winding down since its casting, was suddenly reinvigorated, night turned to day as if all the trees were aflame.

Indeed, they were: magic, visible not only to her inner sight but to her eyes as well, glinting like ten-thousand fireflies from the tops, not true flame but fire nonetheless, brilliant and blinding and beautiful. The trees were no longer gnarled, antiquated things, but grand and majestic, bold and powerful, protectorates of the crystal focus. It was as it must have been two-thousand years ago: everything in the Forest was suddenly bright and beautiful, not a terrible dark thing at all. It was little wonder that the centaurs did not build temples or thrones or anything grand: they did not need to.

The centaurs had fallen: being equines, it was awkward if not painful, legs twisted beneath them like crumpled spiders. Even Lord Chiron had fallen in the ecstasy of magical fulfillment; having not been pulsing full of magic in more than a two-thousand years. Hecate was like a wilted flame.

Her mind churned for a moment, then came to a conclusion: Lord Chiron directed the stored magic of the Source towards individuals. Why the centaurs could not tap it before was simple: they were not capable of it. Lord Chiron was unique in the respect that he could reach the Source and direct its magic to centaurs hundreds of kilometers away, perhaps due to mere predisposition or perhaps due to some magical modification done to him by humans.

If Lord Chiron was the only one who could control the Source, then he could create a hierarchy to keep him in power; the other centaurs treated him as a sort of god-king because he alone could provide the magic. Those might have risen against him in the past would lose their magic. For human wizards, the most terrible thing that could be done to them would be to destroy their ability to do magic; for centaurs, it must have been much the same.

She smiled. Of course. How else could that sort of cult-worship persist for so long? Christianity had its Christ to idolize; Buddhism its Buddha; Islam its Muhammad; Hinduism its Krishna. It was not because he was a savior at all; it was a mere belief stemming from his god-like ability to provide magic, proved an example that had lasted two millenniums.

The centaurs began to rise from the ground: did they know of this? These were the chieftains; did they suspect that his ability to withhold magic was linked to a Source that they could perhaps control individually? Or were they also in on the secret, spreading his influence until his death provided a method for their own self-deification as gods and goddesses of their localities?

Hermione stared at the rising form of Lord Chiron, wondering, wondering, _wondering_…

_I thought him like Dumbledore before. For all his fair words, he seems more like Lord Voldemort now, taking power for his own—_

—_perhaps they are all mere reflections of the same soul._

Something in Hermione snapped; something of her righteous Gryffindor adolescence, perhaps. Dumbledore was no Voldemort. Her speculation on Lord Chiron was just that, mere speculation; she had no right to make comparisons between them.

All the centaurs had risen by now; many gazed around in wonder, seeing something her human eyes could not tell; perhaps they now saw the world as she did, brushed with roping tendrils of magic so unlike the haze that now faded rapidly.

Lord Chiron looked about; the ecstasy of a mother providing milk for an infant child seemed to fill his smile and spill forth into laughter, full and rich and true. Hermione's heart swelled strangely, like a bowl filling with this sweetness; _but no, he is a false god—_and it went away. "Friends!" he cried out, his alto resonating into the glade. "We are restored!"

A sort of whinny went through the centaurs, stomping and rearing up in a grand sort of thunder. Hermione deigned not applaud; Artemis, however, seemed to radiate a sort of approval of Lord Chiron's words even though he merely stood, hands clasped behind his back.

_Does he know of the Source?_

…_of course he does, he knows all…_

She would know if she looked in his eyes; they would be smug, she knew, like Snape's.

The thought trembled in her like a violin string, sweet and singular: she might at last, have a hand over the Dark Lord! If they didn't know of the source of Lord Chiron's godhood, she could use this if they gained control of this resource: perhaps to rouse the ignorant centaurs into an uprising against the false god, or the like.

She looked across at Artemis, recalling her Legilimens. Maybe she could even slip into his mind unnoticed and see if he was truly the lover of the Dark Lord, or maybe if he even thought about her on occasion, looking across and meeting his eyes—

—and falling into them, blue depths, the roar of the sea and the calm of the sky, the cold glitter of ice and the shimmer of summer rivers, the dead depths of the sapphire and the endless reaches of night—

She felt a sweetness slip across her mind, much like honey over too little toast, easing into her thoughts irresistibly. A haze came over her; she savored this sweetness, welcoming it, even; so much better than the confusion of trying to taste subtleties.

The sweetness had an edge to it; slowly, in small connections like the lacy roots of pennyroyal, she felt it, something else sliding across her mind, the sweetness like a lubricant as it went its way, a snake, slithering—

_sneakyslimy snake, slithering slytherin_

_Artemis the Snake, slithering on in_—

The sweetness held her; but another part of her began to struggle against it, fly in the web, bird with broken bones, valiant and vain.

The sweetness remained to her; and the snake laughed, sliding through her mind, slitherslither_ hisssss—_

Desperate, now, she began recalling Snape's lessons; how he had laughed at her, how he had scorned her petty attempts at walling off her mind from him: _you want privacy from all the wrong people_, he had mocked, _you **want** me to see into your pathetic teenage mind, you **want** me to see how mediocre you are and you **want** me to pity you because you think pity will make it all better even if you hate it. What is it that you see in Weasely? Never saw much in redheads—_

—_besides Lily Evans? Everything you never were, wasn't she—_

She remembered that glimpse of his memories: that thought, once an inferno but now mere embers, perhaps nothing more than an infatuation but still, it was there and she saw it and put this knowledge into his mind and then she, too, had laughed.

The fog: she brushed aside tendrils, but they were not to be brushed aside, corridors of her mind overgrown, so verdant with sweetness that she could scarce move through, and she couldn't uproot the bliss because then it would be scarring her own mind, and her mind was all she had—

So she pressed through, straining those tendrils but still passing through in no direction but away; bruising her own mind, maybe she'd have a headache afterwards—but she had to get through now, she had to get out and _away_.

—and through the haze, white, not gray: cumulus versus stratus. She walked forward, faster now through her mind until she was running, brushing the tendrils of sweetness aside until there was no sweetness except in the distance, a canopy of clouds preventing her from full consciousness.

Before her in the thinning of the fog was an amphitheater in the style of the Greeks, low and shallow, marble steps and benches unfolding out before her like a broad Welsh valley. It was a sparse sort of elegance; and it would have been peerless if not for the black silhouette, like a sable thread suspended between a tapestry of white and weaving gray tendrils.

She stepped closer, down each broad step as quietly as she could in the silence. She could see him, yes—sitting in the front row, wearing a sable suit that hugged his slim body in a tight embrace; a very Muggle look. He was intent on the stage before him: and when she saw it too, she found herself intent on her own mind.

On the stage, scenes flickered by: some for mere moments, others stretching out into aching heartbreaks:

_Little girl, big dreams: _A Brief History of Time_ sprawled out across kindergarten knees: page two blurs with the tears of her incomprehension. _

Artemis watched: she came closer and she saw how he leaned forward, fascinated.

_Double Dutch: she's doing it for the first time. She's so happy she's smiling. One of the girls with the ropes sees this and frowns and says: "If your mom's a dentist and your dad's a dentist, what does that make you? A **freak**!" _

_Hermione trips._

She stepped forward and down, entranced by her own history, her own past: watching the complexes tangle in her childhood, little knots that she would trip on later in life and, indeed, had already, even now—

_Little red riding hood: she races to the door to be the first one to hug grandma and the door's unlocked so she goes through, but grandma isn't there to give her a hug, grandma's on the floor, sleeping. Hermione goes over and tries to wake her: but her parents say the doctors have to wake her, they have to call the ambulance_ _so they can wake her before she can never be woken again._

He shifted his weight: for a terrible moment she thought he was bored with her mind but he remained seated, watching. He was fascinated by these dark moments, things that could be found in every mind but here, somehow in hers, he was _interested_.

_The cradle will fall: her dad's right next to her on the bed and he's just sitting there, tucking and retucking her in, he has a bedtime story but he won't say it, no, not yet, won't tell her what happened to the dog last night when daddy was coming home with broken headlights and tired eyes—_

Artemis stood and turned; not because he was bored but because he knew she was there. "_Mademoiselle_," he said; hearing his voice directed at her, _her_, set her heart fluttering.

"_Monsieur_," she replied; she came down a few more steps. She knew it was all her in head, that he wasn't really there but that it was his representation as he probed her mind, but she didn't care—

He gave a little bow, one a troubadour might give. She watched, watched as his hair swung forward and back again, watched as his eyes still stared right at her, she had never known cobras had blue eyes—"I hope you'll excuse me," he said.

It took a moment before she realized it was a question. "—yes, yes of course."

He smiled, cold, and faded away, wintry fog.

The haze of her mind began to evanesce: but there was only one thing going through her head now:

_Artemis and Hermione, wolves together—_

—_wolves are not meant to be alone; it is so glorious when they are but that is not what their very instinct commands them to do—_

—_let us be a pack of two, let us hunt together, let us break away from our packs and make our own, let's not be alone anymore_—

Her eyes opened. She was alone in the glade; the centaurs had left, and Artemis was gone.

She drew out her wand; God only knew where they had gone while she lay there sleeping, dreaming of Artemis and of the sweetness that she might have with him—

"_Apparate_," she whispered, and disappeared.

**:i:**

Heya! New chappie. Anywho, just wanted to say that I hope the centaur culture and history was interesting, since Sorry and I spent a lot of time poking at how we could make it realistic (or as realistic as a centaur society could be.) We also got Hermione out of the Forest, since she's been there for three chapters already, even if that gets her away from Artemis. I hope the end bit with Artemis was coolios. Everyone has bad childhood memories, and I'd think that that's what Artemis would be most interested in from a personal perspective, not a professional Death Eater or whatever perspective. I'll have some of my thoughts and such on my lj, not as detailed as for FDL since this is a whole lot longer.

Also, I wasn't entirely sure how to pluralize 'magic' so I made it 'magicks'. I've seen it that way before, and it just looks cooler than plain 'magics', without a 'k'. Like 'Ann' without an 'e', or 'Katherine' instead of 'Catherine'. Hehe, too much Anne Shirley, methinks.

Oh, BTW, Gumbutt was the one who suggested the extension of the wolf metaphor. Just to give credit where due.

Also: anyone here read anything by William Blake? 'tis good stuff, especially some stupid shorts from my lit class (I HATE seventh grade. All the lit stuff is so babyish after what I do in my spare time… hehe, I bet no one cares anyway.)


	6. Through the Looking Glass

_the_

**R A P U N Z E L**

**C O M P L E X**

- Saeriel -

- Dim Aldebaran -

**:i:**

Chapter Six

Through the Looking Glass

"Falling, falling, falling down. Look yourself in the eye before you drown."

The Indigo Girls

**:i:**

She Apparated to Grimmauld Place.

It was, after all, the safest place she knew.

No Death Eaters, no Voldemort; no Gryffindors, no Dumbledore.

Lupin was the only resident, nowadays.

Grimmauld Place had been her home over the summer, and it had accommodated her like one of Lupin's cloaks; old, worn, but so startling familiar she could not imagine anything else had ever been home. Her parents faded into the distance, and the whirlwind of the events within had taken her.

Somewhat dazed, she saw that she had found her way into the kitchen, the nexus of the house; more surprisingly, she had found her way to someone's lunch.

Lupin's, by the scent of raw meat.

She wrinkled her nose against the beginnings of rancidity. Undoubtedly, he had left on unexpected Order business.

She closed her eyes. She felt as if the world would tip over at any moment, like a coin spinning on the table, beginning to lose nerve… She felt herself grow dizzy, her thoughts tangled up so thoroughly with emotions that nothing was impersonal and everything was impossible.

_Merlin—_she clutched at the thick table; the sturdiness of the oak did not comfort her. Everything was falling around her, everything was falling and she would fall too—

A few rational thoughts formed, crystallizing from that flood of thoughts into a lattice that could suspend her over the abyss she fell so rapidly into. Artemis was a Muggle. In her mind, he had represented himself as a young businessman; and how many young businessmen were there in Ireland with the name of Artemis?

Her mind began to spin in a more constructive manner, given direction and flow. Other things—other things could wait until later. Artemis' Muggle identity hung before her like the Holy Grail, and nothing could stop her, not even thoughts of loyalty.

Near the end of the summer, Snape had abruptly decided that they would go for a walk in town. Of course, this was as much a walk in town as him locking her in a room laced with curses was a tour of the house, but it was surprisingly mild, as far as Snape's surprises went. One of their stops had been at a local internet café, where Snape had had her practice planting thoughts and ideas in people's heads. He had selected this place in particular, she later concluded, because so many of the café's patrons had been downloading pornography, which was something she was very naïve about. Several hours later, she was thoroughly enlightened on the subject, and her implanted thoughts were already bearing fruit: on her last visit, there had been considerably fewer Muggles downloading porn, and more attending to less distasteful matters.

The righteousness to it—correcting the twisted morals that grew in such a rich forest of people—had far outweighed any qualms she had in going in and altering a man's mind without his consent at the time. For other cases, though—for selfish gain—she was at an impasse with herself. Muggles were not Wizards; what chance did they have of defending their innermost thoughts from her? But how would they know, what difference could they sense in the before and afar? They were children to her, to be protected and taken care of.

But this was _now_—did she even need an honest reason, anymore?

The thought dwelled on her mind briefly, but was then driven away by the relentless thought of Artemis.

She stood, made herself presentable, and went out the door with as brusque an air as she could manage, to convince herself as much as anyone. She would be going to an internet café to use Muggle technology. The very thought would appall most wizards—including Snape—but she didn't mind much. She had been a Muggle once, and some things just never leave.

Like computers.

It only took her a few minutes to get there; upon arrival, she transfigured a piece of litter to some currency, and used it to pay for her booth. Surely, helping the environment canceled the sin of cheating the serviceman.

She bought a cup of Chai and settled into her chair.

The thought—twisting a man's mind into liking her more—did not bother her; and this very lack qualms bothered her. He was not even a Wizard; what chance did he have of defending his innermost thoughts against her?

She stared at the computer screen, half-remembering the days when her skin was bleached pale with that halflight. Before Hogwarts, she had been rather fascinated with computers, learning all the latest programming codes and dabbling in her own hybrids.

After, she had always been sure to devote some of her summer time to Muggle matters: even then, it was obvious to her that linking the best of Wizard magic and Muggle technology would be the most powerful tool of the age. She had not nearly the expertise in either to do anything with this idea, and had so kept it in the back of her mind, ready for the time when she was.

Even now in cryptography and decursing, she had made baby steps towards her glorious abstract goal. Many of her decursing was based off of programs used to encrypt data—creating magical spells that did the equivalent had been a major key, in both decoding actual messages and in unraveling spells, which were so easily equitable with those same programs. Soon, more literal connections could be made between the two, and spells could be cast by the click of the mouse…

She reprimanded herself with a cluck of the tongue, and brought up Google, using the easy search 'Artemis' and 'businessman'. She had over a million results; scanning the first page, she noted none of them were Irish. Her terms were clearly too broad, so she added in another: 'Irish'.

Her heart thumped as she saw the results: about a hundred pages worth, mostly news headlines. Fascinated, she began to read: of the Fowl dynasty that stretched across the millennium, of the Butler servitude that paralleled it, of Fowl Manor's notorious defenses, of the Fowl Star and the Mafia, of Angeline Fowl's madness and her sudden recovery.

Her heart thumped at the mention of Artemis' name. Married to Angeline? Killed in the Fowl Star, then found miraculously alive two years later? Surely—

She flipped through some more results. Of course—two Artemises (Artemii?) I and II. Vaguely, she wondered whether the former called the latter 'Junior'.

She narrowed her search in regard to the son. His infamy with Muggles was clear; much like Al Capone, everyone knew him to be guilty of spectacular crimes, but nothing could be proved in the least. This alone could fascinate the public, but reading on, she saw more—the startling breadth of his genius, spanning from Carnegie Hall to a Nobel Prize in Physics (for handling the matter of string theory in a spectacular manner, as she understood it), from the halls of the Louvre to the worldwide shipping industry.

Much of it seemed like perfect stepping stones for Death Eater business: a ruthless criminal history which he had inherited in a splendid manner, fatherless at an early age, though returned to him, a (temporarily) insane mother, and great wealth that could only spoil.

However, in the vast population of the Muggle world, there were hundreds of criminal dynasties, from Antonelli to Nguyen; and the patriarchs of these dynasties often died young. What made Artemis special to Voldemort?

Without a doubt she knew it to be his genius. Such depth would take her breath away even in an idiot savant; but he possessed full understanding of every field of study, and those few he did not, he could very well become so in a few short weeks. In short, he was that very rare genius was intuitive about everything; that could be what attracted Voldemort so, since such a mind would clearly have great capacity for magic, and would thus be a powerful tool in the War.

So why didn't he appear in the Wizard records?

Most dynasties, even the ones known in the Muggle world, had their share of Wizards—Mafia, Tudor, all of them. Not only was it a statistical certainty, but considering the intense intermarrying of the dynasties, even to the point of inbreeding, the blood was simply so pure…

Internally, she cursed her lack of knowledge on the subject. Bloodlines had never interested her; her intense of dislike of even a reminder of her Mudblood heritage drove away any curiosity she might have had on the subject. If she knew the intricacies of Muggle-Wizard dynasties…

It wasn't anything she could find on Google, in any case.

She shut the computer down. Her search had given her adequate information on Artemis—or Artemis Fowl the Second, as she now knew him as—to aid future questioning in the Wizarding world. With a dynasty name, she could search the genealogy texts at the Library for relationships to more firmly magical dynasties, like the Malfoys or the Blacks. From there—

She stood, and pushed her chair in. Her chai had grown cold; as she went out the door, she deposited the cup into a garbage can. She was unused to so much waste; plastic cups instead of ceramic, paper napkins instead of cloth. Disgusting, really, how much garbage Muggles produced—

_My parents are Muggles_, she reminded herself_. Are they disgusting?_

_Muggles can't help it. They're Muggles._

She stopped suddenly on the sidewalk. _I'm a Muggle._

…_no, you're not a Muggle, you're a Wizard, you're better than them…_

Briskly, she started walking again. It was ridiculous, really, how she was degrading Muggle practices, when she had just used their Internet, which had no equivalent in the Wizarding world. Let alone Google. Merlin, did she love Google…

Grimmauld place arrived quickly; she stepped off of the sidewalk and into the barren lot. After a toddler on his tricycle passed her by, she murmured the password; the house appeared before her, and she stepped in.

A note hovered in the doorway; plucking it from the air, she noted the sharp words:

_G.-_

_You are to report to Dumbledore IMMEDIATELY._

She burned the note with a quick spell, though the message was harmless. She had scarce been gone an hour; compared to that endless night in the Forest; why such a hurry? She had never been rushed before in any of her research follow-ups to a decryption project. Indeed, she had always been told to take her time, to explore every possibility once push came to shove and she had to do some research.

And the penmanship on the note had not been Lupin's. She frowned. Lupin was the only one she had expected to be here, with most of the Order busy with their 'other' lives on a Wednesday morning. The full moon was approaching, which was why she thought Lupin might be here, to put himself away where he couldn't hurt anybody.

But it wasn't Lupin here.

She drew her wand. She could spare a few moments to search, surely; a potential security breach, a possible attempt at subterfuge?

Hermione closed her eyes, spreading out magical tendrils to search the grounds. Though this sort of thing was far easier when she could _see_, there happened to be walls in the wall. Her mind was still busy adjusting herself to the idea that it could 'see' magic, let alone that magic didn't behave like visible light and went right through walls. For now, eyes closed.

Grimmauld Place was a great haze of old spells—not the even haze of the Forest, but a blotchy sort, concentrated around the artifacts where the spells had begun to disattach, like the fraying of rope. Buckbeak was a dim glow, like an old kerosene lantern; the master bedroom was rimmed with light from the protective enchantments; the broomstick cupboard glimmered like a candelabra; and a silhouette of fire blazed in the corridor.

She opened her eyes, smiling slightly to herself. The magical signature was unmistakable: Severus Snape. With her tutelage in Occlumens, she had grown to recognize his presence even at great distances with this familiarity.

Hermione pocketed her wand. "Snape?"

He emerged from the corridor gloom. With her eyes open, she could detect more subtleties in his appearance; his magical aura was clearly faded, as if dense fog had evanesced in the unrelenting sun. Physically, his skin was more sallow, his hair more lank, his eyes more sunken: though his sneer was as disdainful as ever. "Miss Granger."

She inclined her head in respect, though at the present she felt nothing but curiosity. It was rare for Snape to be called out to Death Eater duties two nights in a row; something was brewing, and it was something that she wanted to be involved in.

His lip curled as he considered her appearance; she felt a blush rise in her cheeks, and she ordered it away desperately; even now, she was such a child… "Out late on business, I presume?"

She raised an eyebrow, forcing her manner to be as calm and collected as his. "May I assume the same?"

He took a seat, reclining with all the grace of a Stoker vampire. Even sitting, his presence was demanding, haughty. "One of our number was missing last night," Snape began, idly tracing the woodgrain on the table. "A chair, empty at the Dark Lord's side. A chair—a chair not normally there. You see, Miss Granger—the Dark Lord sits alone at the head of the table when we feast, reveling in death and damnation." His fingers reached the edge of the table; one by one, they stood on end, poised. "Miss Granger, do you have _any idea_ where the occupant of this chair might have gone?"

There was something in how he twisted the words—something in that hooked knife in his voice, something in how it reached in and forced guilt from her dying conscience, that made her blush hotly and respond in all truth: "Yes, I do."

One by one, his fingers marched themselves off the edge; fascinated, she watched, the long, pale fingers that were silhouetted against the gloom of Grimmauld Place. "Care to share, Miss Granger?"

She opened her mouth to reply—then hesitated. _Why doesn't he already know?_

—_does he no longer posses Voldemort's confidence?—_

—_does Dumbledore no longer trust him?—_

—_or does he simply want to hear **me** say it?—_

"Now, Miss Granger?"

It spilled out before she could help it: "It was Artemis Fowl, sir—he came to the centaur affair. He—" She stopped herself; Merlin, she was letting this all out before even reporting it to _Dumbledore—_

"He _what_, Miss Granger?" He leaned forward; his dark eyes bored into hers. She could feel an Legilimens connection begin to simmer between them as he probed through her mind.

She steeled her mind against him; but it had already been violated once this day, and she was weak; however much she struggled, it was like a cat in a bag in a river, and as he plucked through her memories she could only hide her deepest thoughts from him, the darkest thoughts possible for a member of the Order—

He broke the connection; she felt a sharp chuckle cut the air between them. "_Really_, Miss Granger—I never would have _dreamed_—"

She closed her eyes; she felt so tired, suddenly, her mind raped and her emotions stretched taut and now quite limp. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He considered her from the chair; the dark eyes only seemed to violate her again. "There is nothing to apologize for; such thoughts are delicacies to the cultured mind. Lucius, for example: he always takes the orphans, for they always have the most intriguing fantasies of wealth and power." His lips curled into a cruel smile, like a cat pondering its prey. "The Dark Lord insists upon this: rape the mind before the body. Else, fools like Macnair would be quite useless at breaking the Aurors."

She looked up with a sudden fear. "Sir—"

He laughed; rich and bitter like an old wine. "Never fear, Miss Granger. I don't take sport in such things. He reserves me for higher things." Abruptly, he changed the topic: "But you will thank me for all this, when the time comes. You see, you will not be given to Lucius, or to Macnair, though they would both love to have you—you will be for the Dark Lord himself." His voice changed to a sort of low purr, darkly self satisfied. "At the end of all things, you will be what I have against him, you will be what strikes, for you will be the only one who can deceive him—"

Her fear swelled within her. "Sir, surely I will not be captured—"

He laughed again, not with that richness but with an edge, the sort on a razor that you turn against yourself. "Of course not. You will turn yourself in."

"Sir—"

He stood, and drew his wand. "You will understand eventually. For now, go to your precious Dumbledore, make yourself as happy as a traitor can be. _Adieu_."

And with that, he Disapparated.

The world spun, and she could only sit down.

_Merlin—_

The things he said—such terrible things—

_He calls me his protégée, he calls me his weapon…_

…_he treats me like a child, like a sacrifice!_

She set her head in her hands, too shaken to even support herself.

_He's toying with me, I'm a game to him._

_I'm nothing._

…_nothing, not even a pawn I'm so petty…_

She felt the tears well up in her eyes, hot and wet like fresh blood.

_I'm nothing more than a whore for him, something to be used and cast aside._

She shook her head; a sob wracked her body as a curious emotion took her and left nothing behind.

_Nothing more than a whore for them all._

_Merlin—_she pulled her head up and stared at her hands in sudden shame. _These are the hands that will doom us all, he said it himself…_

… _these are the hands that will turn themselves in to the Dark Lord, these are the hands that will destroy the Order…_

She fumbled for her wand; better to take her life now—

The wand was in her hands; cool, smooth, sane against the madness of it all. It would be so simple, a flash of light and she would be gone.

Hermione clutched at it with both hands, as if the chance would slip from her grasp.

Two words.

Six syllables.

Twelve letters.

She pointed it at herself; the wandtip dug at her throat, bruising it, like a lovebite of death.

…_so simple…_

She heard voices crying out; her conscience calling out for an end, every moral commanding her to say the words.

…_do it, do it now Hermione, do it before he can use you again…_

Stopping for a broken sob, stopping and trying again: "Ava—"

The wand slipped from her hand; falling to her knees, she reached for it, half blind with tears, slipping from her hands, slick from tears—scrabbling for it—

"Hermione?"

The soft, warm voice of Lupin cut into her more than Snape's ever could. Sobbing, she looked up and saw his gray silhouette at the doorway.

"Oh, _'Mione—_" He kneeled down and took the sobbing girl in his arms. The curse was still on her lips. It was all she could do not to die as she burrowed her face into his worn cloak.

Her broken sobs subsided into shuddering words: "I—I failed—"

He hushed her, holding her tightly; his warmth surrounded her, and she could smell the sickly sweet of lycanthropy on him. "'Mione, it doesn't matter right now—'Mione, forget about that right now—"

She shook her head, rubbing his cloak. "No, Rem', I failed, you don't understand—"

"I do," he said firmly, but quietly, rocking her back and forth like a child, as a child. "I've failed missions before, but things are always righted in the end—"

She drew away, shaking her head. His concerned face filtered back to her through a veil of tears. "You don't understand, you don't _understand!_ Snape—"

"—is an oversized bat," he said firmly, catching her by the elbows. He pulled her up so they stood; she felt like she would fall. "Whatever he said, forget it. He's as tired and worn as you are, and people say strange things when they're tired."

'_and do' _rang out unspoken.

She allowed herself to be propelled to the bathroom. "Clean yourself up," Lupin whispered, "and we'll go out for some fire whiskey in Hogsmeade together. Ron will be jealous, eh? We can deal with Dumbledore later."

She grinned weakly, despite herself. Ron _would_ be jealous, and it wouldn't help matters between them, but it was something—

He smiled affectionately, pulling a twig from her hair. "There you go, now. I'll be right outside here."

He closed the door on her. The messiness to the bathroom greeted her; mechanically, she went to the sink and washed her hands, then face, rubbing a washcloth all over. The cold water was a dream.

After a fever, one seldom remembers the peculiar delusions that go hand in hand with the high temperature. It was so with Hermione: as she stared into her reflection, with the wild, bloodshot eyes, the flushed skin, the messy hair that hung about her face, she could scarce remember the circumstances of her madness.

_Merlin_, she thought, touching her fingers to the still-hot tears on her cheeks, _Merlin, what did I almost do?—_

—_what have I done?_

She ran more water through the washcloth, setting it to her face.

_They will never trust me again after this,_ it occurred to her. The thought was dry, stoic; a mere statement of fact.

She wrung out the cloth and set it out to dry. She set to work on her hair, brushing it with something of Tonk's.

_They will view me as unstable; Lupin saw what I was about to do, and even if he trusts me he will have to report it. He is as loyal as the rest of us._

Her thoughts were cool, calm, like a computer's.

_Us? There is no 'us' anymore. _

_There is me, and there is them._

She tore out a knot with a certain amount of viciousness.

_Snape is trying to use me; I am a tool to him, I am a pawn, I am to be thrust into the heart of darkness so I may turn into a queen and checkmate the entire world, doom Dumbledore, doom Voldemort, doom us all._

_Voldemort—not a pawn, but a toy: a thing to be tossed around and away, a thing to be worn, garnish on a gaudy crown, an amusement._

_Dumbledore—I am to be held back, I am to be protected, I am to be a resource. He wants to suppress the wolf within me so I am tame for him._

The thought came to her, inevitable:

…_no, there **is** an 'us'… Artemis and I, us, we, we are two of a kind…_

_They will try to manipulate us._

_Artemis is his pet now, his amusement: and he wants another, he wants me… he will manipulate us both if I am captured—_

_Artemis…_

_I must rescue him._

She transfigured the dirty washcloth into a new, clean set of robes; she shivered during the brief moment of nudity as she changed.

_Artemis, Artemis—we are the same, you and I, used and abused…_

She looked at herself in the mirror; a strange shudder ran through her, with no source nor end. She looked cold and sharp, like a zircon crystal.

_We are wolves together, you and I—_

—_for I know that I am a wolf._

She opened the door; older, but still so very much a child. "Rem'?"

He was leaning against the opposite wall; attentive but tired. Kindness sapped strength from the bones. His eyes swept over her; their exact expression was something Hermione could not fathom. "Yes?"

"—my wand, please?"

He handed it back to her silently; she muttered a thanks. He didn't trust her with it, not after what she had almost done; and he still didn't trust her, but he didn't want her to know that. Lupin was Lupin; all warmth and weariness with that sickly sweet of lycanthropy.

She followed him to the kitchen; her thoughts drifted on Snape as she saw the chair where she had fallen so deeply into herself.

"Still up for some firewhiskey?" Lupin asked. He added in a grin like a garnish.

She smiled in return; it felt cold, even to herself. "Sure," she replied.

They Apparated; _The Hog's Head _was a brisk, wordless walk away from the hamlet entrance.

Once inside, Lupin took a seat at the bar; Hermione followed suit. The air was hot and heavy for October.

The bartender came up, waiting for their order.

"Firewhiskey," she said, before Lupin could make smalltalk with him, "for the both of us."

The bartender looked like he was going to ask her age for a moment, but then shook his head and went to get their drinks. Hermione had a small burst of pride at this: he had assumed her older than twenty, the minimum age for such heavy drinks.

He came back presently with the two mugs. After serving them wordlessly, he left again. The whole place seemed listless, full of a heavy silence. She knew it wasn't the normal air of the place, despite its reputation of that _other_ Hogsmeade bar; it had to do with the awkward halfpeace of the war, the undecidedness of it all.

It had infected her in a different sort of way; sharpening her normal anxious, serious self, giving it something to latch on to. Mixed with her old, familiar altruism, it had resulted in volunteering for Order duties, those long months ago.

And now—she sipped the firewhiskey. She'd work in the Order still, she decided; not because it was the Right Thing To Do, but because it would keep her in the thick of things. It would keep her on the forefront of the doings of both sides, with her direct contact with so many of the Order members, and her constant monitoring of the Death Eaters. He would keep a closer eye on her, given her little performance, and probably wouldn't entrust her with any more proper field duties. However, he could not afford to lose her for decryption: she had grown too much in the role, she was too valuable, too good…

The firewhiskey burned in her throat. She would bide her time—_yes_, she would wait until the opportunity arose, the opportunity to rescue Artemis and to rid herself of all these responsibilities. They would be nonpartisan to it all, they would be wolves together, they would be mates.

And Lupin; Lupin at her side… even in the heavy scents of the bar she could smell that lycanthropy, since full moon was fast approaching. Lupin had always been kind to her; she appreciated his generosity as advantageous to her, but she could only scorn the motives. He had a genuine fondness for her, a protective urge that was so close to fatherhood, it almost made her regret her thoughts.

But she had to start acting, or he would get suspicious of these new thoughts in her head.

"Rem'?" she asked, trying to imitate the innocent fear she no longer felt. "Why was _I _sent into the Forest?"

Lupin sipped at his firewhiskey; he never had had the intent of drinking it all. "It wasn't my decision," he said eventually. "If I had it my way…" He trailed off, and took another sip of the firewhiskey.

"Dumbledore?"

"No," he said slowly, "no, not Dumbledore. Dumbledore had nothing to do with it."

She frowned; she could feel the old curiosity welling up within her like a freshwater spring. "Then who?"

He looked down at the bartop. "The older Aurors—Mad Eye, mostly, but also Kingsley and a few others."

She already knew the answer, but she asked anyway: "Why?"

When he looked up, his eyes were pained. "We need you, 'Mione—we need everyone we can get our hands on. It's not right, but we have to…" He stood abruptly, tossing some coins onto the counter in an uncharacteristic display of terseness. "We should be going, now. Dumbledore is expecting us."

She nodded, standing. She hadn't had much of the firewhiskey, but what little she had had did her good: numbing that sharpness in her mind, blurring the world to a certain ambivalence it didn't have in Grimmauld Place.

It was a brisk walk to the Hogwarts entrance; Hagrid was there to greet them. The magnificent gates, all curling iron and stoic stone, were no longer kept open for the general public to stroll into—the Ministry's rule, not Dumbledore's. Opening them required the use of several of Hagrid's keys, which were large and ornate, and clinked gently in the crisp October wind.

"Nice to see you back, Hermione," Hagrid said as he opened the gates. When the iron parted he took her in a great bear of a hug. Though he may not have known the exact nature of her mission, he must have been told of the possibility of rescuing her from the confines of the Forest. "Bein' one piece an' all."

Released, Hermione forced a grin. "Nice to see you too," she replied evenly. Her sharpness blunted with his obtuse sort of comfort. "How's everyone?"

Hagrid grinned widely, and they all started walking towards the castle. "'much the same, really, though I 'spect that Harry and Ron are worried about you."

Of course," she said. The irony was hard on her lips; not worried, but jealous, terribly so, since they would know this wasn't just decryption this time around, they would know this was something real and dangerous, the full blooded work of the Aurors they all revered.

Lupin and Hagrid fell into a conversation regarding the Forest werewolves. It didn't interest her much, so her mind wandered amidst the approaching spirals of Hogwarts. Harry and Ron. They were so naïve… not understanding her in the slightest, or even really attempting to. She was always an outsider to the two of them; in previous years she had loosely revolved around them, like a white dwarf star around a tight binary system, supporting them whenever things when awry.

Now—she smiled to herself. So much of what they did and thought was fixated around her. They went to her for news on the Order, for help on all their homework, for advice on new spells. All of their doings came through her now, it seemed… And their thoughts! She had heard them talking to each other so many times when she was not around, expressing fears for her and how she was changing, envy for all she was doing…

They reached the main gates. Hagrid and Lupin said their goodbyes, and then Hagrid turned to her. "I hope you'll do well," Hagrid said gruffly. "I un'erstand that whatever you were doing las' night didn't go as well as you ha' hoped."

"No," she said softly, "it didn't."

He smiled brightly at her. "Better luck next time, eh Hermione?"

She nodded, and went inside.

The halls were bustling, but it was the fake sort of hurry that students use habitually when in school. Many turned their eyes towards the former teacher and known lycanthrope; and even more towards their own, their best and brightest, who walked in his company.

Though few enough people had any idea she was involved in the Order—Harry, Ron, and a few of the more trustworthy DA members—there was quite a bit of speculation about her these days. Some of it was understandable, as far as gossip went: the ever-increasing amount of time she spent with Snape, her decreasing obsession with schoolwork and the lack of corresponding decrease in her grades, her increasing fights with Ron and Harry, the abrupt haircut that left her looking all the more awkward… the list went on. Many more subtle things were noted by the Ravenclaws in the Library: the increasingly darker books she was checking out, the relative benevolence of the librarian, the more time she spent in solitude there. None of it was anything dangerous, on their part; she was on speaking terms with many of the more observant students, and they did not appear to suspect the depth of her involvement with the Order, nor did they appear to be the least bit tempted to betray these little tidbits to the Death Eaters.

Some of it worried her—she, too, had noted changes in other students, most notably Malfoy. Before—and in many respects still—he was a cowardly git, a mere nuisance. However, she had seen him lurking about in the Library in the same places she found herself lingering in, seen him pouring through old tomes of curses and enchantments with an unprecedented studious fervor. There was something more in that pointless malice towards the Golden Trio now, some edge to it that sent a chord of mixed fear and curiosity rippling through her.

The most curious thing was that so many of these changes in Malfoy paralleled the changes in her.

The obvious conclusion was that he, too, had increasing involvement with his cause… what was his mission, what was his duty?—

Dumbledore's door. She blinked at the suddenness of it.

"Madeleine," Lupin said, quite clearly. The gargoyle slid away, and they began ascending the winding staircase. The silence between them suddenly seemed heavy, as if a rope weighed by the great burden of subterfuge. The steps echoed in a sort of staggered cadence.

This was the last chance to assure Lupin of her sanity, of her stability. Else, they might never give her a field mission again… "Dumbledore… will he be…"

He answered the hanging question: "He won't be mad at you. Truth be told, I doubt anyone really expected you to succeed. At the very least, you have gathered some very valuable intelligence for us on centaur politics, which we have so little of. And besides—I'm sure there was some complication, no?"

She nodded. "Yes—yes, there was."

They reached the door; Lupin put his hands on her shoulders and smiled reassuringly down on her. "I'll be right next to you. Don't worry about this at all… Alright?"

She fidgeted, then relented. "Alright."

As they entered the room, she silently congratulated herself on the excellent performance. Hermione the actress…

Dumbledore was at his chair, scratching something down with a long quill pen, but clearly expecting them. He set the pen down, and gazed at her through his glasses. "Ah, Hermione Granger… I was hoping you would come… Please, sit." He gestured broadly; two chairs flew across the room and set themselves before the desk.

She shook her head. "No, but thank you anyway. I'd prefer to stand."

Dumbledore smiled. "Of course. I suppose you're afraid you might fall asleep if you sit, hmm?"

She allowed a small smile in return. "It _has_ been a long night, Professor."

He nodded. "I am sure you are quite tired. Unfortunately, sleep will have to wait until later—could you report on your mission?"

Her stomach curdled. Despite all these newfound ideas of independence and Artemis, she still found herself so desperately ashamed of her failure, not for herself but for the Order, and for Dumbledore. He was a great man; surely, he was no manipulating her so!

She took a breath and began. Things spilled out, some clumsily worded, others concise and impersonal, but always, always, more than what was wise. She told of the unicorn and the mark it left upon her, of the centaur guard and their unicorn-reverence. She told of the great herd of centaurs and of their holy, expectant silence, of Lord Chiron's ghost and of his evanescent ghost. She told of the Death Eater Artemis and of how he brought Lord Chiron to life, of the centaur chieftain's meeting and of the Source.

With it—she could feel the immense respect and gratitude towards Dumbledore swelling like a high tide. He had guided her through all these years, from all the unknowns of a Mudblood in a magical world to the high adventure of saving Sirius to defending them all in the Department of Mysteries… he had held the Wizarding world together when all threatened to fall apart, and he did it all with the twinkling and a smile. Surely, he was not the fool she had so recently thought him, surely he was worthy for her to serve—

Yet, there were some things she could not bring herself to tell him: the unicorn's hesitance; her trickery with the guard; her helplessness with Lord Chiron; her inability to resist Artemis' Legilimency.

But most of all, she hid her infatuation with Artemis.

No one could ever know of Artemis.

When she was done, she felt so tired, so very tired she could have collapsed then and there and slept the century away. Lupin, sensing something of this, put a strong arm on her shoulder in support.

Dumbledore eyed her with something fathomless; respect, irritation, disgust? She could not tell. Eventually, he sighed and picked up his quill again. "Very well then. I will speak to your instructors about giving you the day off. You may retire."

A thought struck her, something nearly forgotten in the rush of it all. "What of the Pensieve?"

He looked up from his papers. "We can discuss this at a later time, perhaps." His eyes twinkled—at her eagerness? _A good sign_, her mind dimly noted, _a good sign… he may even trust me still… _"For now, my dear, you need to rest."

Something in her rose, weary but dogged. "But Artemis—"

"—can wait until you are better rested," Lupin finished. He began steering her from the room; she didn't resist. She felt so tired, so very tired…

Heading down the stairs, something heady rose up within her; some total compromise between the dark sharpness of her mind and the innocent righteousness of her soul, something that made her slip and fall and feel each bruise tear her like the repentance of a scourge or the flash of a whip.

_Time in the Hospital Wing_, she thought as the veils closed around her, _will give me time to think._

She heard Lupin's voice, and gave herself to sleep.

**:i:**

An abrupt ending; we apologize. It's just that it's darn hard to find a good endpoint.

The... things that happened were not too OOC, we hope. God knows we fussed over that section to get the right amount of manipulative!Snape, naive!Hermione, and not!confused!readers.

Next chappie should have Ron & Harry back in, and some time finally passing by. Seriously, this has been over the course of a single day so far. Kinda crazy to think about, no?

Hey, who listens to Indigo Girls? Sorry and I were tossing about for a beginning quote about two months ago, and we heard this song on the radio and we were bothlike: _jackpot_.

We have also posted edited versions of the prologue and chappies 1 & 2. Thanks for all the nitpicks, guys! They were lovely to sift through whilst editing. Keep 'em coming! CC is always appreciated.


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